The relationship between Google and the world of smartwatches is both continuous and discontinuous. I continue because Mountain View has never left the sector, and indeed has recently relaunched its proposal with Wear OS 3, discontinuous because it has been spoiled over the years by laziness and inexplicable gaps. One above all, the Google Assistant.
Wearing big G’s digital helper on your wrist is potentially a big deal selling point for smartwatches with Wear OS. Yet for some time the Assistant has been working in fits and starts on old versions of the operating system, with an extremely fragmented scenario that changes from manufacturer to manufacturer, from model to model and even from user to user.
Samsung
08 Feb
In short, a lot of confusion. But on the horizon there is more than one hope: in fact, on the occasion of the latest update of Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4, the only ones already equipped with Wear OS 3 for now, Google explicitly spoke of the fact that the Google Assistant is about to return. When, exactly, we still don’t know.
SMALL STEPS FORWARD
And from Wear OS 3.2 developer preview just released In this sense, no comforting information emerges: yet no trace of the Assistant. This latest version doesn’t actually contain major upheavals, but minor adjustments aimed at making the experience more consistent.
The app icons, therefore, have an appearance closer to the Material You style introduced by Android 12 (but without being tied by a thread for the color palette like the adaptive theme on smartphones). We do not yet know, however, if at the time of the release of the stable version Wear OS 3 will have the appearance we see now: only time will tell.
Then there is an addition on the security side, with thepatch update in March 2022. For the rest, the fact that there are no major news can be interpreted as a positive factor: perhaps Google is finally at the final stages and is filing the last details before the release. And at that point, we imagine, it will strike the X hour for the Assistant as well.
