Wear OS 5: four crucial reveals from Google I/O 2024

As expected, Google has used its annual I/O developer conference to talk about Wear OS 5 and the upcoming smartwatch operating system update. Here are the four most important news stories.

There’s been a lot of buzz surrounding Wear OS this year, and that’s thanks to the many interesting smartwatches that have hit the market over the past two years, including Google’s own Pixel Watch 2.

Google says its user base will grow by 40% by 2023, so you’ll no doubt want to know what’s coming to the portable platform in the next full version upgrade.

When will Wear OS 5 launch?

Although Google only talked about the developer preview during its I/O keynote, it did confirm that Wear OS 5, based on Android 14, will “arrive later this year.”

And it may not last long, as Wear OS 4 arrived in August 2023 with the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 series.

If the same happens this year, we’ll see Wear OS 5 launch in July at Samsung’s next Unpacked event, where it will unveil the Galaxy Watch 7 range.

Longer battery life

It’s no secret that one of the downsides of many Wear OS smartwatches – with the odd exception like the OnePlus Watch 2 – is limited battery life.

Google is making this a priority in the next version, saying that “Wear OS 5 will deliver performance improvements over Wear OS 4.”

The search giant isn’t too specific, but says that if you track a workout, the device will be more efficient and running a marathon – which takes most people about four hours – in Wear OS 5 will use 20% less power than in Wear OS 5. to its predecessor.

That sounds impressive, but it’s specific to a heavy-duty scenario, so whether Wear OS 5 will last longer during lighter periods of use remains to be seen.

Better dials

This year, Google is making improvements to Watch Face Format – the tool used to create watch faces for Wear OS – and these will mainly focus on ‘Flavors’, complications and weather conditions.

Flavors essentially let you see and choose different versions of a watch face, with differences including the color theme and associated complications.

Complications – the small parts of a watch face that give you useful data – support ‘goal progress’ (for data like step count) and ‘weighted elements’ which can represent ‘discrete subsets of data and show their relative size, where else would you get something like this’ can be used as a pie chart.

The last major upgrade is the ability to display weather data as part of a watch face, so it can give you the current temperature and weather or even a forecast for the next few hours.

Larger smartwatch screens

While a common complaint with smartwatches is how big and heavy they are – especially for those with smaller wrists – Google suggests we may see even bigger screens in the future.

In a section of the I/O press materials titled “Larger screens,” Google said, “With the momentum around Wear OS, we’re seeing a greater variety of round screen sizes and resolutions, offering more choices for the user.”

With this, the company is releasing new guidance on how developers can create responsive user interfaces for a range of watch screen sizes.

These guidelines weren’t available at the time of writing, but it certainly seems like Google is expecting even bigger smartwatch screens than the ones we already have.

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