Google has announced that Wear OS 3 features will be available on wearable devices running Wear OS 2. These include improved messenger, third-party widgets and expanded support for Google Pay, among other features. According to the company, the old OS will be updated in the coming weeks.
The latest Wear OS 3 software platform was developed in collaboration with Samsung. During the Galaxy Unpacked event, Samsung showed off new watch models based on this OS. We are talking about the Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic.
Wear OS 3
Wear OS 3 has received numerous cosmetic and functional changes over the previous generation; including a new YouTube Music app, updated Google Maps, a new Messages interface; and support for third-party widgets, and broader support for Google Pay.
At the same time, Google announced that only watches based on the new Snapdragon Wear 4100 chipset like the Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 3 and TicWatch E3 models will be fully updated to the new operating system. For example, the owners of watches based on Snapdragon 3100 will remain without the full version.
Luckily for those with a Wear OS 2 watch; Google has decided to add at least a few new features to it. For example, as soon as the update reaches users’ devices; the built-in messenger will allow responding to messages directly using the watch. Third-party widgets, for example, allow you to check information such as the weather forecast or start the timer with a single swipe across the screen.
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Finally, the Google Pay application will receive an update, and service support will be added in many countries and regions – Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong part of China, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Slovakia, Sweden, Taiwan part China, Ukraine and the UAE. In addition, the YouTube music application and “turn-by-turn” navigation in Google maps have been added.
Wear OS 3.0 will receive several old smartwatches
Qualcomm has earlier confirmed that the new version of Wear OS 3, developed by Google and Samsung; will be able to run on smartwatches with the Snapdragon Wear 3100 chipset.
They limited themselves to stating that they are working with Google to bring Wear OS 3.0 to a number of Snapdragon platforms. “The Snapdragon Wear 3100, 4100 Plus and 4100 platforms can support Wear OS 3.0; but we are not currently discussing any details,” a Qualcomm spokesman said.
In theory, this news is optimistic and leaves hope that companies will be able to update already released smartwatches to the new version of Wear. But we already know for sure that Fossil will not update its old models of wearable gadgets to Wear OS 3.0. The release of the update is not included in Samsung’s plans too.
