Review: Google's Wear OS 2.0 Can not Repair Its Obsolete Smartwatch Hardware

The main revision of Google's Wear OS is out today and it will be coming soon on most devices released in the last 18 months (although Ars has already spent a week with a pre-release version of the program). ;BONE). Faced with the fierce competition of the Apple Watch Series 4 and the Samsung Galaxy Watch, Google's most obvious change in the new Wear operating system is a new user interface for most major screens. There are not many new features or features, but everything is better organized.

Google has not done much to publicize the real name of this release, but it identifies the update as "Wear OS 2.0" on the "About" page, so we call it. Do not confuse "Porter OS 2.0" with "Android Wear 2.0, "however, because it was launched in 2017. When the name" Android Wear "was changed to" Wear OS ", the version numbers were reset and Android Wear started at" 1.0 "." Wear OS then started at "1.0" and went back to "2.0". Pursuing the old version numbers would have made things a lot easier: Google and a terrible brand – name a more iconic duo.

The new layout

The essential changes made to Wear OS 2.0 revolve around the new layout, which places a useful screen at the top, bottom, left, and right of the main dial. Quick Settings is the top screen and the notifications panel is the bottom screen, which places them in much the same place as the Android Phone's notifications / quick settings panel. The left screen is a page of predictive maps, just like the old Google Now feed on an Android phone. The good screen is the new home of Google Fit, which has recently been revised with separate measures for milestones and more intense workouts. In addition to the main quick settings, the other three directions represent the three pillars of the new Wear: Notifications operating system, the Google Assistant and Google Fit.

Compared to previous versions of Wear OS / Android Wear, this is a major improvement. Quick settings and notifications have not moved, but before, Wear used left and right sweeps to change faces. It always seemed like a waste of high-end real estate. Under Wear OS 2.0, you can always change faces quickly by pressing and holding the watch face. Watch faces are still the only things that OEMs are allowed to customize in Wear OS and have not changed in version 2.0.

In addition to the four main screens that you can drag from the face of the watch, the rest of the Wear OS remains unchanged. You can still access an application list by pressing the Crown button, and all applications remain unchanged. There is a built-in Google Play Store for apps and a large settings section with plenty of options to scroll through apps. For messaging apps, you can always respond with voice, pre-recorded answers, emoji writing recognition or by sliding on the world's smallest QWERTY keyboard, easy to ridicule in catches. screen. All of this is covered in our Android Wear 2.0 review (which, again, is the previous version of Wear OS 2.0).

The notification panel

The notification panel is the biggest change for Wear OS 2.0. Notifications are moved from a paginated list to a single scroll window. This not only makes it more similar to the normal Android Phone notification panel, but the change also makes scrolling much faster when you have multiple notifications. With the Wear 1.0 paginated template, four notifications meant four vertical sweeps on the touch screen, one to navigate each page. With a single pane, all scrolling tricks based on the touch screen work: a medium power movie scrolls past several notifications at once, and a harder projection will be performed at the end of the list. You can also continue turning the crown knob like a wheel and move up and down the list.

The notifications on the shutter are each separated by a horizontal line. They display short previews of the content (usually the name of the app, the time and two lines of text). Just like on a phone, you can drag a notification to the left or right to delete it, and at the bottom of the list is a "Clear All" button. If you really want to interact with a notification, you can tap on it to expand the online notification to display more text and many action buttons. For a Gmail message, you will see "Archive", "Delete" and "Reply". But for a message from something like Google Hangouts, things get a little more interesting. Besides "Reply" and the app "launch app", you get smart answers online, as on the new notification panel of Android 9.0 Pie. If an application supports them, you will get simple responses generated by machine learning, which are sometimes more enjoyable than trying to talk or typing an answer on your little watch.

The good thing about expanding notifications and extra buttons is that it all happens online. While Wear 1.0 would have taken you through many different pages, it's easy to manage multiple notifications on Wear 2.0 without losing your place.

As on all previous versions of (OS) Wear OS, the entire notification system is powered by an Android API. Each surveillance notification then has the same notification text and the same action buttons as a phone notification, regardless of the individual application support for Wear. Each application works automatically.