Wear OS (also referred to as Wear and previously Android Wear) is a part of Google’s Android operating system designed for smartwatches and other similar smart wearable devices. When connected with smart mobile phones running Android 6.0 or higher or iOS 10.0 or higher and the Google pairing app provides limited support, Wear OS brings in Google Assistant technology and mobile notifications directly to the smartwatch shape factors. Canalys estimates that more than 720,000 Android Wear smartwatches have been shipped. As of March 15, 2018, Wear OS had between 10 million and 50 million application installations. Wear OS is expected to account for 10% of the smartwatch market in 2015. The platform was released on March 18, 2014, and a developer preview version was released at the same time. At the same time, Motorola, Samsung, LG, HTC, ASUS, and other companies announced that they have become partners.
Thanks to the latest Play Store update, owners of some of the best Wear OS watches got a surprise. According to several threads on Reddit, some smartwatch models will receive a redesigned Play Store. The various elements of the Play Store app are more obvious, with larger pill-shaped buttons that should make navigation easier. This new design runs through the entire application, and some buttons even use a gradient color scheme.
The new design is very similar to the Wear OS platforms of Google and Samsung jointly developed by the two companies. Google showed off some new unified platforms at Google I/O, and Samsung recently demonstrated its new One UI Watch platform at MWC 2021. The redesign of the Play Store now seems to be available for some smartwatches, including Moto 360 (3 Gen 5), Suunto 7, Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 3 GPS, and Fossil Gen 5, but the availability at this time may be different. Our TicWatch Pro 3 is not updated, nor is the newer TicWatch E3, but our Fossil Gen 5 is updated. This change only affects the Play Store app and does not appear to appear anywhere else in the update.
It is not clear what prompted the update, but in any case, the company announced that its equipment is not currently upgraded to the new unified platform. Older devices may still get some elements of the new Wear OS, but for now, Google is largely silent on the subject of Wear OS updates. In any case, we have contacted Google and Fossil to clarify the updated look and will update you when we get more information. The new unified platform is expected to launch the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 later this year, which will be the first smartwatch to introduce the new Wear operating system.