Wear OS Weekly
My new weekly column focuses on the state of Wear OS, from new developments and updates to the latest apps and features we want to highlight.
Ever since Fossil abandoned Wear OS, the Android smartwatch space has had a distinct lack of style. Fossil had software issues it couldn’t overcome, but its traditional watch designs were always on point, while Samsung, Google, and Apple barely even try to court the luxury watch crowd today. And I believe the time is right for more hybrid Android smartwatches to fill that gap!
Over the holidays, I held a smartwatch fashion contest, and it was a wake-up call. As someone immersed in tech for years, I’d grown accustomed to how smartwatches look. But when my non-techy relatives ranked watches from prettiest to ugliest, they crowned the Withings ScanWatch 2 hybrid the best — and called the rest of the smartwatches boring at best and unwearable or ugly at worst.
Even though Android watches rarely use squircles, we’ve reached the point that it doesn’t matter that they’re circular; they still don’t look like “watches.” Recent Galaxy Watches and Pixel Watches maximize display space, so they look like gadgets instead of accessories — especially the smaller models.
Even the “Classic”-style models are too large, thick, and glaringly bright to blend in. And so these brands have instead pushed in the opposite direction, giving up on “watch” designs and launching massive, expensive models like the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra and Apple Watch Ultra 2 — knowing that their core audience and credulous tech reviewers will happily accept it.
The problem is that this strategy does nothing for folks who want smarts and fashion. Hybrid watches come the closest, but they’re hard to find and rarely strike the perfect balance between the two. I suspect that’s why, when you look at Canalys’ 2024 worldwide wearable sales, basic watches still outsell smartwatches by a wide margin.
Samsung is no stranger to experimenting with multiple watch models every year, and I know it’ll likely return to its Classic design with the Galaxy Watch 8. But I wish instead that it would try something new: reach outside of the tech nerd space and pick up where Fossil left off.
The problem with hybrid smartwatches
When you make a hybrid smartwatch, do you focus more on smarts or the watch? Brands like Fossil, Garmin, and Withings have all made valiant efforts at this question, but I don’t think any of them have really nailed the formula.
Fossil spent years as the main Wear OS option while other brands abandoned it, giving users access to different sub-brand styles — Michael Kors, Skagen Falster, Kate Spade, and so on — with Google’s signature apps and assistant. Its lineup included several hybrid models, from the Skagen Jorn to the most recent Fossil Gen 6 Hybrid Wellness.
Fossil couldn’t keep up with the software after the Samsung/Google Wear OS merger and gave up on Wear OS last year, leaving a huge gap in the market. Still, Fossil watches were never perfect, with performance and battery life issues; and its hybrid models didn’t even necessarily use Wear OS, with limited smarts and functionality without a positive trade-off like longer battery life.
Unlike the Withings ScanWatch 2, which has a tiny OLED cutout inside a normal steel interior, Fossil used subtle, eye-friendly e-ink screens that covered the entire hybrid watch face, giving you more room for information. But aside from obstructing watch hands, you had to reckon with E Ink’s slow refresh rate when scrolling through long notifications or menus. It was only best suited for static information.
Withings’ tiny-display strategy pays off with longer battery life and a design that looks eminently “normal” when you aren’t receiving notifications. If you want a watch that tracks your health data but wouldn’t look out of place in a business environment, the ScanWatch 2 or its more expensive siblings like the ScanWatch Nova are where I’d start.
Still, the ScanWatch 2’s tiny screen barely fits any data, making reading notifications annoying. More importantly, for this discussion, you’re mostly wearing this watch for health and sleep data. It’s much more limited than what you’re used to with a traditional Android smartwatch, with no apps or Assistant.
I also reviewed the Garmin Vivomove Trend, which looks surprisingly stylish from a brand that’s well-known for its thick, sporty designs. However, the Trend had issues with a finicky touchscreen and slow performance, which seems to be a trend (no pun intended) with hybrid watches.
What I’d want out of a Wear OS hybrid smartwatch
I suspect a lot of Wear OS watch owners don’t actually use apps all that often. They want on-wrist calling, voice commands, actionable notifications, and health insights. They’d also presumably like longer battery life than the 1–2 days they typically get!
What I think could work is an actual hybrid version of Wear OS, the same way Google made a kid-friendly Wear OS for Galaxy Watches. It could have a limited number of core Google apps and major third-party options — such as Gemini, Google Maps, Wallet, Messages, and music apps like YouTube Music and Spotify, for starters — that would each use a stripped-down UI to work on a smaller grayscale or E Ink screen.
We’re getting closer and closer to Gemini on Wear OS, and I think that would be essential for an experience like this. You could tell the watch assistant to map you to a nearby coffee shop and have the next step and directional arrow pop up on a low-res screen. The same goes if you tell it to start a playlist and check the song metadata or ask it to pull up your Google Home controls; the idea is to have as little touch navigation as possible because it’s harder to look through an app drawer without any color.
Even if we just got a fully health and fitness-focused watch like the ScanWatch 2 that sends your heart, blood oxygen, stress, ECG, and skin temperature data directly to Fitbit or Samsung Health, I bet a lot of people would buy into that option and eschew the extra Google smarts that burn through battery life.
Of course, Google and Samsung already make long-lived watches, but they’re sporty, cheap squircles like the Galaxy Fit 3 or the old Fitbit Sense 2. They have their place for budget hunters, but there’s no reason why we can’t get the Fit 3’s tech inside a steel watch with some actual class, even if it costs much more.
And that brings me to my other point about these hybrids: I don’t want Samsung and Google designing them! Fossil had the expertise to create beautiful smartwatches and was only held back by the software. Google and Samsung have software expertise in abundance, but they need outside help on the physical side.
Just like Meta put its smart glasses tech inside of Ray-Bans, and soon Oakleys, Google and Samsung could employ the help of well-known luxury watch brands to launch their simplified version of Wear OS Think Rolex, Cartier, Omega, Patek Philippe, and so on! Heck, if Ultrahuman can sell a $1,500 luxury smart ring in department stores, you’d think Samsung and Google could pull it off!
We’ve already seen luxury Wear OS watches from Tag Heuer, Montblanc, and (obviously) Fossil, but all with AMOLED displays that could only look like pale imitations of watch faces to their discerning customers — plus a lack of experience with software updates.
If it’s Samsung (or Google) building the software experience, then we’ll at least know these hybrid watches will get years of speedy software support instead of being immediately abandoned. And by going all-in on hybrid designs, Wear OS will be the “mature” brand for serious adults while Apple Watches remain known for their kiddy squircles.