TL; DR
- Today, during MWC 2021, Samsung unveiled One UI Watch, its new software skin.
- The skin will live on “Wear OS 3.0” – Google’s and Samsung’s new wearable OS, which does not yet have an official name.
- The two biggest functions are a software kit for the design of the watch face and the synchronization of the phone and the watch.
At Google I / O 2021, Google surprised us all by announcing the next level of its wearable operating system, known as Wear OS. Google and Samsung have teamed up to develop a new operating system that will appear on future Samsung wearables.
We haven’t seen what Wear OS 3.0 looks like yet. We don’t even know its official name. However, at Mobile World Congress 2021, Samsung announced One UI Watch, the software skin that lives on Wear OS 3.0 when it lands on a future Samsung smartwatch. The company confirmed that the next Galaxy Watch – almost certainly the Galaxy Watch 4 – will be the debut of both this new operating system and the watch version of One UI.
Connected: Google’s collaboration with Fitbit and Samsung could save Wear OS
As expected, the software looks very similar to Wear OS, but with some tweaks to the One UI design. The three things Samsung focused on when it presented was the large app ecosystem, phone / watch sync, and a design toolkit for the watch face.
App ecosystem
One of the biggest drawbacks to using a Samsung wearable versus a watch with the latest version of Wear OS is the lack of apps. Wear OS watches have access to the Google Play Store, which is where you can find hundreds of apps. Many of these apps are smaller versions of popular apps that you use on your phone, such as Strava, Spotify, MyFitnessPal, and more.
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Fortunately, Samsung has confirmed that the next Galaxy Watch will have access to Google Play Store apps. This is great news and shows that the basis of this new, unnamed operating system will very likely be Wear OS or something extraordinarily similar.
The video clip above also shows that the One UI Watch’s skin doesn’t differ too far from today’s Wear OS. However, the next video clip shows how Samsung tweaked the design a bit to better match its Galaxy phones.
A UI watch phone / wearable sync
Samsung stated that one of their big goals with One UI Watch is to get more synchronization between your phone and your watch. Hence, the next Galaxy Watch will automatically sync with your phone in many different ways.
One example that Samsung showed was installing an app on your phone. In the video clip we see how installing Spotify on your phone automatically installs the same app on your watch. This is a huge time saver.
Connected: The best Wear OS apps for Android
Another example is how time zones are synchronized. In the video, a phone has two active time zones in its watch app: Seoul and Barcelona (the former is the capital of Samsung’s homeland and the latter is the location of the Mobile World Congress). Since the user sets this up on their phone, the same setup is automatically carried over to the watch.
Samsung also showed how call blocking on your phone or watch is carried over to the other device, and how design aspects are carried over from One UI to the watch version.
Design software for the dial
Finally, Samsung unveiled a new software kit for watch face designers. The software shows a very simple user interface that allows people to get creative and create all kinds of new watch faces.
It is not clear if anyone can download and use this software or if it is reserved for approved designers / developers only. However, its simplicity suggests that it will be open to everyone.
Luckily, there are hundreds of watchfaces and watchface stores already on the Google Play Store if you’re not the creative type. You certainly won’t feel like having more choices when it comes to faces on your next Samsung watch.
Samsung is expected to showcase the next Galaxy Watch at its own Unpacked event later this summer. Stay tuned for this and other news about One UI Watch, Wear OS 3.0, and more.