The Wear OS 7 update has officially announced by Google at its annual Google I/O developer conference, and while some of the announcements today were somewhat expected, Wear OS 7 was a little bit of a surprise. Right now, most current Wear OS smartwatches that came out in the last couple of years are powered by Wear OS 6. This was a pretty big upgrade with lots of little features and quality of life upgrades. It also brought the next improvement to battery life, which is something that Google always seems to be working on with the next iteration.
That won’t stop with Wear OS 7, as battery life improvements are one of the things Google mentions. The company says that users will see up to a 10% boost compared to now. That’s pretty good. Especially if you have a Pixel Watch 4, which charges wicked fast even when the battery is dead.
Google has announced that widgets are coming to Wear OS 7 with the new update
In addition to the battery life improvements, Wear OS 7 is also introducing widgets. Naturally, Google is calling these ‘Wear Widgets.’ It’s a fitting name that gets straight to the point. These are an evolution of the Tiles feature you can currently access on your watch. With Wear Widgets, these will transition from being fullscreen to instead using a 2×1 or 2×2 design. This will allow you to see more of those Tiles on a single screen since they’ll be in a slightly more svelte widget format. Again, more glanceability.
Google is also bringing in a new feature called Live Updates. With these developers will be able to push live updates from their apps to the watch in real time. Google says these real-time updates will be able to be surfaced on the watch from watch apps or mobile apps. The most useful, of course, will be the automated app tasks.
You can set up automated app tasks from your wrist
Have you ever just decided not to do something because it would be an extra tasks? Tasks that you either didn’t want to do or didn’t have time for? Well the days of you overlooking those tasks will be long gone soon because Wear OS 7 is introducing automated app tasks.
Google says this won’t require any development effort at all. Google doesn’t mention all of the apps will get support for these tasks. However, it does mention that users will be able to invoke and track automated tasks “such as placing an order from Door Dash.” So, this suggests that will be one of the supported apps. Google also says support will hit “selected phone apps.”
Google is also enhancing media system controls, adding a new workout tracker, and it’s adding a way for developers to integrate their apps with agents and assistants, like Gemini. It’s unclear when Wear OS 7 is launching, but users can probably expect it to be available on the Galaxy Watch 9.
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