One of the biggest drawbacks of Wear OS was that it was slow and didn’t have many adopters. All the top smartwatch manufacturers usually prefer an in-house operating system such as the Tizen (Samsung), watchOS (Apple), etc as a third major third-party OS that works both with Android and iOS smartphones were not available. However, wearOS (previously wear and Android wear) was one promising OS developed by Google and captured every smartwatch manufacturer’s attention. We all know it comes from the same house that developed Android OS, the leading mobile operating system in the world.
Wear OS started big. It partnered with Motorola, HTC, Samsung, Asus, and LG. It launched its first watch in 2014 under the name Android Wear – LG G Watch. In the first 6 months, nearly 720,000 watches were shipped. Now that’s a start.
Google Wear OS 2 to Support Google Pay in 10 New Countries
However, in the last 7 years, Wear OS watches had many technical problems which deterred users from buying a wear OS watch despite working on both Android and iOS smartphones. Notably the battery life and there are also complaints that the OS is not very fluid. Because of many such issues, wear OS, despite being a renowned third-party OS, still didn’t capture a major chunk of the market. 2021 seems to be changing that.
Google acquired Fitbit and completed the acquisition sometime in January 2021. Now all Fitbit watches will move from Fitbit OS to Wear OS. The popular Samsung Galaxy watch series adopted wear OS in its latest Samsung Galaxy Watch 4. That’s a very big move. The only competitor to Apple watches in the premium segment now has a wear OS.Â
Google Pay Wear OS Supported Countries
Now Google is also updating its apps. In January this year, Google pay was added to wear OS watches in 16 new countries and now it adds another 10 new countries to this list. Below is the list of the 10 new countriesÂ
- Austria
- Bulgaria
- Estonia
- Greece
- Hungary
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- Portugal
- Romania
- Singapore
Now the total list of countries where Google Pay is available on Wear OS watches is 37 and they are –Â Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States
These enhancements and new acquisitions show that Google is dedicated to making wear OS the next Android of smartwatches.Â