As well as announced, WearOS 5 it was presented today at Google I/O 2024. With this update Google promises a qualitative leap for Android smartwatches. The update focuses on improvements to the battery life and new features for tracking physical activity, making next-generation smartwatches more efficient and functional.
Official Wear OS 5: features, functions and release date
Wear OS 5, which introduces a series of new features aimed at improving the user experience of Android smartwatches. This update promises a battery life extended by 20% during tracked physical activities, thanks to optimizations that make the system more efficient than the previous Wear OS 4 version.
One of the most interesting features of Wear OS 5 is the introduction of “Flavors” for watch faces. These allow users to customize your smartwatch by choosing from different color and font options in a single menu. In addition, new features such as “goal progress” and “weighted items” have been introduced, which display progress towards a fitness goal in a more intuitive way, similar to a graphic a cake.
The innovations don't stop there: Wear OS 5 also improves health-related features withadding new data for the ride, such as ground contact time, stride length, vertical oscillation and vertical ratio. These metrics help improve running form and are especially useful for athletes looking to optimize their performance.
As for notifications during workouts, there is a new feature will reduce le interruptions, allowing you to set a delay before the smartwatch alerts the user that they are out of the desired range. This translates into fewer distractions and less invasive notifications.
Also with Wear OS 5 there is Health Connect, which replaces Google Fit and will allow third-party fitness apps to sync in the background and share the user's physical activity history, always with their consent. Another fundamental aspect concerns the needs of developers: the new Android Studio Koala makes event simulation easy like losing heart rate data or auto-pausing, making fitness apps on Wear OS less prone to unexpected errors.
Finally, the Watch Face Format (WFF) has been updated for better support the varieties of round screens available today. The developers (yes, it's one version of Wear OS for Developers) will receive tools to test how their apps will appear on different screen sizes, ensuring optimal viewing.
