We asked, you told us: You overwhelmingly still have hope for Wear OS

Google is expected to launch the Pixel Watch 2 this week, and colleague Rita El-Khoury noted that she’s “genuinely excited” about Wear OS for the first time in years.

We wanted to know what you thought about the smartwatch platform’s prospects. Did you still have hope for Wear OS? We posted a poll inside our article and here’s how you answered it.

Do you still have hope for Wear OS?

Results

Over 2,600 votes were counted in this poll, and it turns out that a massive 85% of respondents said they still have hope for Wear OS. We’re guessing that Google’s own foray into wearables along with rejuvenated Wear OS software are the main reasons for this optimism.

Meanwhile, just 8% of polled readers said they didn’t have any hope for Google’s smartwatch platform. We can understand the skepticism as the platform has been a thing for over a decade now but the Apple Watch still rules the roost.

Finally, 7% of surveyed readers said “it depends” when asked if they still had hope for Wear OS. Reader comments suggest that Wear OS still has room for improvement.

Comments

Rafa Cabrera: WearOS and WatchOS need to be reviewed because a smartwatch is not a mini smartphone, we don’t need a calculator, we need health apps and app monitoring as well as resources for things that are better to do on a smartwatch than on a smartphone.

Low SK: One issue I notice is that not everyone needs advanced health function in a watch. My wife uses a LTE watch to keep connected and listen to music on her spec as she went out for stuff like grocery shopping and fetch the kids. She also can review task and schedule on her watch. She can also make payment and open map if needed on the watch. The problem is that LTE watches with Whatsapp support are very limited and some like google watch has almost 0 support in most asian countries. Apple watches are selling well because of the lifestyle they support and not health app that every review is about.

Marty: The Pixel Watch beats the Apple watch for health related info and it beats the Galaxy Watch for smoothness and speed.

jdrch: In fairness to Google, the biggest reason Wear OS stagnated was Qualcomm wearable SoC was ancient and they were unwilling to update it. This condemned all Wear OS watches to being slow, laggy messes. Samsung’s difference is they have their own SoC in Exynos, that allowed them to make performant wearables.