At I/O 2024, the company unveiled the developer preview version of Wear OS 5.
At the I/O developer conference that took place today, Google presented Wear OS 5, which provided us with a preview of the new capabilities and other enhancements that will be included in the platform. Despite the fact that the firm is not yet prepared to release the final version of the wearable operating system, the developer preview already includes improvements to the battery life. As an illustration, Google stated that Wear OS 5 will have a power consumption that is twenty percent lower than Wear OS 4 in the event that the user runs a marathon. Although Wear OS 4 has already significantly improved the battery life of smartwatches that are compatible with it, it still has a lot of room for improvement when it comes to regulating the power of a device. Additionally, Google has provided developers with a new guide that teaches them how to preserve power and battery in order to enable them to create applications that are more efficient.
Additionally, Google has included additional features in the Watch Face Format, which enables developers to create a greater variety of watch faces that display a variety of information. Along with this upgrade, it has made it possible for developers to create applications that may display current weather information in a look, such as the temperature and the likelihood of precipitation. In addition to this, the company is incorporating support for new sorts of complications. They include “goal progress,” which is appropriate for data in which the user has a target but has the ability to surpass it, and “weighted elements,” which can be utilized to represent discrete subsets of data.
It is possible that Wear OS 5 will result in the development of new applications as well as the addition of new features to existing applications. The Health Connect API that Google has developed for the platform will make it possible for applications to access user data even while they are just operating in the background phase. Users will be need to provide their explicit consent before apps are allowed to take advantage of these functionalities. Additionally, it will make it possible for them to access health information that has been collected over the course of the previous thirty days. Last but not least, the Health Services API of Wear OS 5 is now able to provide new data types for running, such as ground contact time and stride length.
The release date of Wear OS 5 has not been disclosed by Google; however, its predecessor, Wear OS 4, was introduced in August 2023 alongside the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6. There is a possibility that Watch OS 5 may be released with either the Samsung Galaxy 7 or the Pixel Watch 3 later this year, taking into consideration the schedule and the devices that are compatible with the existing platform.