At Google I/O this year, Samsung and Google revealed that they are working together on an integrated Wart OS experience. Yesterday night, we finally got to see the fruits of those efforts in the form of the One UI Watch experience that’s based on Google’s wearables platform.
Samsung’s MWC event saw the South Korean giant showing off its new wearable software. It also signalled a move away from the company’s Tizen OS that it’s been pushing through its smartwatches over all these years. This new platform is similar to the approach the company’s phones take – building a user experience with Android at its base.
Despite all this, we are yet to see any hardware that will take advantage of the new platform. Samsung said that the first Galaxy Watch with One UI Watch will debut at the upcoming Unpacked event.
The software itself is focused on providing a seamless experience across your phone and wearable device. For instance, if you install a Wear OS-compatible app on your phone, the companion app will automatically be installed on your smartwatch. If you have additional time zones set in your clock app, they’ll jump to the smartwatch as well, while blocked callers on the phone will be blocked on watches as well.
One of the biggest issues with Tizen was its lack of support for third-party apps. This switch to Wear OS will allow Samsung smartwatch users to access a massive library of apps through its native Google Play Store.
Samsung hasn’t revealed any details about whether its previous-gen watches will receive an update to One UI Watch or not. But we should find that out at the upcoming Unpacked event that’s scheduled for this summer.