In Defense of Wear OS

Well, this is it, the final Wear OS Diary entry. I’ve been using the Fossil Sport for about a month now and I have some thoughts about this watch and it’s the specific OS. I realize that I must acknowledge that this watch is not the best smartwatch, and according to some people this isn’t even the best smartwatch for android!. This Wear OS life isn’t for everyone. This OS and watch are for me, and that’s why I love it.

People of the Jury, this is my defense of Wear OS.

There are several problems people will point to as unacceptable for a smartwatch platform. These problems are:

• Battery Life
• Processor struggles
• Lack of apps
• Bugs in the OS

Here’s how I deal with each of these problems:

Battery Life

Many people claim battery life is not great on Wear OS watches. It depends on your perspective to judge the battery life of a Wear OS watch. I don’t find this to be an issue, Fossil provides battery settings that help tremendously. In fact, I refer to my first Wear OS Diary entry for more info on those settings. My watch lasts a full day starting from 8:00 AM - 10:30 PM with about 40% left in the tank by the time I put it to charge (mind you I use the daily battery mode from the fossil settings, you can extend the battery through other settings). For me, the bottom line is, are you able to charge this watch every night? No, for real can you do it?

 I can charge my watch every night and that gives me more than enough battery life every day. If you can charge your watch every night, you can have a great battery life every day(again, mind you, this is for the “daily” battery mode). Human beings charge their phones every night, I feel our smartwatches can be the same.

Processor Struggles

Another complaint surrounding Wear OS watches is sluggish performance. Many Wear OS watches are running on the older snapdragon processors, but they have updated most to the latest Snapdragon 3100. Technically, this new Processor isn’t new since they released it in 2018, but it is the latest available for Wear OS. Using a Wear OS watch with the latest processor has been a good experience, as long as you don’t do too much at once. Apps will usually run at a normal speed, but some apps with animations will lag. Other times it struggles to switch through tiles, these slowdowns often happen when the watch is doing something else at the time such as GPS or fitness.

 These slowdowns are part of a compromise you must make with Wear OS, although they don’t happen often they are annoying. The struggles of the processor are only in apps that use the main chipset, notifications and other parts of the watch that are low-power are very smooth thanks to co-processors in the 3100. I feel like the slowdowns don’t bother at all, I just learned to ignore them. The real problem lies with Qualcomm not improving their chipsets for Wear OS. The main processor in the 3100 is the same as its predecessor, the 2100. Qualcomm has to improve its processors if it wants to compete with other smartwatches, and the current strides it’s making are not enough for lasting results.

Lack of Apps

Apps have never been great on any kind of wearable, and their main purpose has adapted to become either tiny versions of their parent apps or to sync information from their parent apps. Some apps are available, such as my to-do app todoist.

 Although most apps cannot be found in the app store, I can say the same for a lot of smartwatch platforms. Most users use smartwatches for notifications so most apps are not used anyway.

Bugs in the OS

Many reviewers have seen bugs in the OS that hinder the whole experience such as random drops in Bluetooth, random lag and stutters, and music controls sometimes not working. I honestly don’t know how to deal with these bugs.

 Recently I’ve seen no Bluetooth drops or music drops this past week, so maybe things are getting better. That’s still no excuse for the inconvenience that happens rarely, google needs to fix a few bugs but overall my experience has been OK.   

                      Why this is for me

The reason I love Wear OS, why I’m willing to put up with the problems is because it just works. The integration within android is seamless, and I don’t have to download or pass through any third-party apps. Me not needing to install a million apps from Samsung frees me to a cleaner experience.  Wear OS also does a great job with the basics such as notifications along with useful tiles that are like widgets for your watch. Wear OS isn’t for everyone, but it’s enough for me and I’m sticking with it. 

I rest my case, your honor.