It is no news that Android Wear is dying. Google has rebranded Android Wear to Wear OS, probably a move to get attention towards the dying brand. The name will appear in the coming weeks on watches and the app.
The smartwatch culture seems to be heading nowhere. Priced more than a mid range smartphone, smartwatch did not make sense to the price conscious consumer. Android Wear smartwatch were always a thing of luxury with even the cheapest of them priced upwards of $150. Long back, the Pebble caused a ripple which resonated and led to the rise of affordable non-android wear smartwatch. But due to lack of support the Pebble became a thing of memory.
Most Android Wear watches suffer from the same problems, bulky design, poor battery life, no solid system of updating old watches to newer versions and minimal developer support. What’s worse is that make OEMs have pulled out of the Wear business and expensive fashion brands have taken a step in. Now the watches are even higher priced.
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Smartwatch were supposed to bring about ease and flexibility at a price that was affordable. Although they did bring about the former, the latter is something that few have managed to get close to. Currently, the only smartwatch that does both of those things is the To watch, although it might too see an end if enough support isn’t received.
Do you mean “Tic” Watch rather than “To” Watch?
I have 4 Android Wear smartwatches, and none of them is bulky, not even the Urbane that people claim is. Where did they expect the sensors and the battery to be fitted?
The only issue I have with Google, which is the reason I’ll never buy another Android Wear smartwatch, is the same unreasonable OS upgrade policy. Only 1 of my 4 watches received the Oreo update. There was no quantifiable reason why the Wear24 wasn’t in the list of watches to receive the OS upgrade.
On a side note, I’ll only buy from the Chinese OEMs when they start shipping their Android watches with the latest version of Android instead of the outdated Android 5.1.