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Wear OS is poised for some battery life improvements with the coming of Wear OS 5, showing that Google is continuing with its efforts to make Wear OS just as good as other smartwatch platforms.
There’s still much that’s unknown about Wear OS 5, like when it’s being released, but today Google has shared some new details about the platform that will give users something to look forward to. The improved battery life is a major factor. Google did this twice before with the releases of Wear OS 3 and Wear OS 4. Both times, Google partnered with Samsung to ensure battery life had gotten better. In part this was due to the smartwatch chipsets that were being used in Samsung’s and Google’s watches at the time.
When Wear OS 4 came around, these improvements came up again with the releases of the Galaxy Watch 5 series and Galaxy Watch 6 series, as well as Google’s Pixel Watch 2. Wear OS 5 will see battery life get yet another bump. Google doesn’t mention how much battery life will improve overall. However, in a recent blog post about upcoming changes to the Android ecosystem, it does give some examples
For instance, the company says that if you were to run a marathon with a Wear OS 5 watch, it would consume up to 20% less power than a watch on Wear OS 4. That’s no small uptick. So it seems like across the board battery life could stretch by a noticeable amount.
Wear OS 5 battery life will improve in other ways
Improved battery life is always going to be great to see with Google’s platform. But the company isn’t focusing on just making battery life better. It’s also improving watch faces. As The Verge notes, an update is coming to Complications that will make them more useful. Complications are the little pieces of data that can show up on a watch face. These can be for steps taken, your heart rate, and more. In Wear OS 5, Google is adding even more complications for watch faces including weather conditions like changes in precipitation.
Then there are “weighted complications” which will show “discrete subsets of data” that Google likens to something you might find on a pie chart.
Health and fitness features get some love too
In addition to the battery and the watch face improvements, Google is also making some improvements to the health and fitness features. Some aspects users will see are the ability to check ground contact time, stride length, vertical oscillation, and vertical ratio. Users will also be able to look at more than a month’s worth of historical data for health metrics. As well as third-party data while apps are running in the background. Google doesn’t mention when Wear OS 5 is coming but chances are it’ll launch alongside Samsung and Google’s new watches.