After several years of iterative updates, Wear OS 6 is shaping up to be a major leap forward. For starters, Gemini will replace Google Assistant on the wrist, along with a major redesign of Material 3 Expressive that takes advantage of round watch faces. And for the third year in a row, the latest version of Wear OS will also have some improvements in terms of battery life.
“Over the past couple of years, we’ve completely reimagined Android with Gemini at the center, and now we’re extending Gemini’s capabilities beyond the phone,” says Jaime Williams, Wear OS product manager.
Williams says that the addition of Gemini is more than just a replacement for Assistant, which is already available on many Wear OS watches. As with most generative AI, one of the benefits is better natural language interaction, meaning you don’t have to speak your commands out loud. Gemini on Wear OS will also interact with other apps. For example, you can ask about restaurant reservations, and Gemini will access your Gmail to retrieve that information. Williams also says it will understand more complex queries, like summarizing information. To access Gemini, you can also use the complication, the app launcher, a combination of buttons, or say “Hello, Google.”
Gemini requires an internet connection to work. That means a Bluetooth connection through your phone, or a Wi-Fi or LTE connection on your watch. Williams says the team is exploring offline capabilities in the future, but declined to comment on exact timelines.
“Gemini is not dependent on Wear OS 6,” Williams says, explaining that while certain features will be tied to Wear OS 6, they will be available on every Wear OS device that already runs Assistant today. (This means that if you have a Wear OS watch that doesn’t have Assistant, it won’t get Gemini either.)
Despite this, it’s still encouraging news when you consider the platform’s struggle to integrate Assistant. This was severely delayed when Google moved from Wear OS 2 to the combined Wear OS 3 platform with Samsung’s Tizen OS. Fossil lasted two years before finally leaving the market. And while some Wear OS watches still don’t have Assistant, it hints that the transition to Gemini may be less confusing.
Wear OS 6 will feature Google’s new Material 3 Expressive design language. “We wanted to go beyond a more functional system and create something that has a deeper connection to you. With Wear OS 6, the first thing we did was really go full circle,” says Lily Darling, Wear OS visual and motion team leader.
Darling did not answer the question of whether this means that Wear OS (and therefore Google) is claiming to be a circular display or not. However, she did note that Google has decided to “elevate every design component to celebrate the round form factor.” This includes everything from layouts and font choices to scrolling animations and screen transitions. On-screen buttons have been tweaked to “fit the display” so they’re easier to press, and tiles and notifications have been made more prominent. Notifications now include avatars and embedded thumbnails so you can quickly see who has texted or emailed you. The transition from Android to Wear OS is made with color themes, so you can quickly change them to match your phone or clothes.
Google didn’t have much to share about Wear OS 6’s performance, other than a modest increase in battery life of “up to 10 percent.” It’s probably not the most exciting update, but Google’s vice president and general manager of Wear OS, Bjorn Kilburn, says that smartwatch users are constantly asking for it.
“It’s a really hard problem, and it’s a game of inches. We’re continuing to work on it,” Kilburn says, noting that not all Wear OS users will experience the battery savings in the same way. He says the team has improved power efficiency when using the watch to play or control media. So, if you use a Wear OS watch for these purposes, you can expect to notice it more than those who never use their watch for this.
