Better battery life and faster updates – The still secret update for Android Wear
If Google has something to announce at I/O, it usually happens during the big keynote at the start of the conference. In a few hours, all divisions of Google can show new things at lightning speed. Android Wear was also discussed and that part took no more than half a minute. Android Wear has recently had an update and watches from brands like Diesel and Armani are coming… Stop the time, we’re not putting in a joker.
While Google spoke extensively about the update of Android for smartphones, the company did not announce anything about Android Wear. That is strange, because Google is indeed working in the background on a brand new version of Wear. As of now, nothing is known about when it will be released. It hasn’t even been announced yet, let alone you can already flash a test version on your watch. Nevertheless: it is coming and at some point an official announcement will follow. That update will be based on Android O.
To Android O
Android Wear and the variant of Android for smartphones are very similar, as it turns out when Podogov talks about the improvements that the update should bring. The most important change is something that will probably make all users happy: the update should improve the battery life. This is due to a change that Google is making in Android O. In addition, apps that run in the background are heavily restricted in order to promote battery life. For example, an app that requests the location in the background simply gets the last known location. The watch then does not have to turn on the GPS receiver and check where it is.
In addition, apps will have fewer opportunities to run in the background. After a few minutes, Android closes all background processes of an app. Developers can work around this by using the so-called JobScheduler. That’s a feature that collects all requests from apps, wakes up the phone periodically and handles all requests at once.
Both changes should improve the battery life of Android Wear watches, especially when nothing is running in the foreground. At this stage it is still unknown how big the improvement will be.
Another big change is Project Treble . This should lead to watches and smartphones receiving updates faster after this update. Google wants to achieve this by separating Android updates from the so-called vendor part.
This means that the drivers for, among other things, the soc, the screen and other hardware elements do not change with an update of Android Wear. As a result, Google can complete the update much faster for many watches, because it doesn’t have to wait for companies like Intel, Qualcomm and Synaptics to provide drivers for components for the next version.
Conclusion
So those are some very welcome improvements, but there will be a lot of time before the update is here. This is because Google still has to visit all hardware makers for the upcoming O update to make everything work. “That takes a lot of time,” said Podogov. In addition, Google is working on functional improvements specifically for Wear, but the developer does not want to say what those will look like. At I/O, Google did not yet show any watches with the new software.
The development team doesn’t have forever. An update to Android O must be there before Google moves to Android P. That will probably happen in a year. It is therefore inevitable that the internet company will announce more about the update for Android Wear in the foreseeable future.
Anyone who was afraid that Google would let the Wear platform sink in will be disappointed. After Wear 2.0 based on Nougat, a new version is coming soon. This way, watches with Google’s wearables operating system, very appropriately, keep up with the times.