Google, Samsung herald best of Smartwatch OS experience

New Delhi: Google has announced to bring the best of its Smartwatch Wear OS and Tizen platform by Samsung into a single, unified platform, to deliver faster performance, longer battery life and more of the apps you love available for the watch.

For performance, Samsung and Google teams collaborated and made apps start up to 30 per cent faster on the latest chipsets with smooth user interface animations and motion.

“To achieve longer battery life, we’ve worked to optimize the lower layers of the operating system taking advantage of low-power hardware cores to enable better battery life,” said Bjorn Kilburn, Director of Product Management, Wear during the Google I/O conference on Tuesday.

This includes handy optimizations like the ability to run the heart rate sensor continuously during the day, track your sleep overnight and still have battery for the next day.

“Finally, our unified platform will make it easier for developers to build great apps for the watch,” Kilburn added.

All device makers will be able to add a customized user experience on top of the platform, and developers will be able to use the Android tools to build for one platform and ecosystem.

Now, from anywhere in the watch, you can access shortcuts to important functions, like switching to your previous app.

The smartwatch users can easily choose what information they want at a glance, and which actions they want to have just a swipe away.

“Google Maps and Google Assistant are being redesigned and improved. Google Pay will also be redesigned and add support for 26 new countries, beyond the 11 countries currently available. YouTube Music will also arrive on Wear later this year, equipped with features like smart downloads for subscribers to enjoy music while on the go,” the company informed.

With the latest Wear update, Google has introduced Fitbit features like tracking health progress throughout the day and on-wrist goal celebrations.