Summary of I/O news

Aleksander H

Thought it might be an idea to collect the news in one appropriate post,

Google and Samsung are now working together on “rebuilding” WearOS. Article also mentions integration with Fitbit, but not many details on how this will work.

Third party tiles update should be available in “coming weeks”. Not sure if they mean available to watch manufacturers for inclusion in their next system update, or available to users via app updates.

Spotify will add support for offline music/podcasts on WearOS.

YouTube Music with offline music is coming.

Google Pay rolling out to new countries. It showed up on my watch today here in Norway.

A video giving a glimpse of the new WearOS version here. They also mention that existing Tizen watches will get support/updates for 3 years, but new Samsung devices will use WearOS.

isazi

@aleksander-h offline music and more GPay is good news, very good news.

Aleksander H

@isazi said in Summary of I/O news:

@aleksander-h offline music and more GPay is good news, very good news.

Yup, that was the big ones for me. Now I can go for long slow runs without my phone and still buy unhealthy snacks and listen to music :p. Kind of surprised Google Podcasts was not mentioned as I would think that to would be a natural fit.

Hoping Google/Samsung renewed interest in WearOS will convince Audible to release an app for offline playback.

pilleus

I was surprised that Samsung will move away from Samsung Health and will use Google Fit for basic health tracking. On the other side a correct decision to have one fitness tracking app for “Wear”, which can collect all data from different watches and apps.

Aleksander H

@pilleus was this stated? I was wondering about this myself, but couldn’t see any mention of what their plans for Samsung Health was.

pilleus

@aleksander-h

I don’t find the website, but I read it today. There was stated too, that Fitbit will be integrated to become the new health tracking app in “Wear”. Let us see …

Aleksander H

@pilleus After some searching I found a quote from Samsung on a cnet article.

“Beloved Samsung services like Samsung Health will continue to be core to the Galaxy experience and available on Galaxy smartwatches. For the users who have enjoyed Samsung Health service, the service will continue on the new unified platform and data is exportable to the new unified platform. Samsung Health is not part of the new platform,” Samsung confirmed via email.

Weirdly worded email. First they say it will continue to be core to the Galaxy experience, then they say it is not part of the new platform…

giulio

@aleksander-h
But the new wear will be avaiable for suunto 7??
Will have AN update?

giulio

Or suunto will roll out a new watch and dont release update to suunto 7?

Aleksander H

@giulio we don’t know.

Saketo Nemo

Suunto 7 is quite recent, by heart it came out less than a year and a half ago. Therefore I believe it will get wearOS 3.0. Let’s hope

Jamie BG

@aleksander-h

Very wierdly worded, but I think they were probably trying to say that you could still use Samsung health as the companion phone app, which would pull in any data from GFit/Fitbit health app.

Sort of makes sense as Fitbit health is loads better than GFit, and what they are doing on the health side (especially with the subscription service) is class leading, so in a lot of ways why wouldn’t anyone want to benefit from that including Tizen users, if available (and of course depending on whether subscription and how much).

JANTIKAINEN

@aleksander-h said in Summary of I/O news:

Google Pay rolling out to new countries. It showed up on my watch today here in Norway.

How did it show up on your watch?
Here in Finland I still get: “Gpay is currently not available in your country”

Aleksander H

@jantikainen weirdly it actually comes and goes. This morning it was there, now it is not. Shows up again if I search for it on the Play store where I get an “enable” button. When I press it, it seems to stay active for a few hours before disappearing again. The card I added is sitll there though once I click “enable” again.

Aleksander H

@jantikainen I see others on reddit reporting that they got access yesterday, and now it is gone again. Almost seems like they activated it to early.

olymay

I’ve just seen this article on XDA Developers which some of you may find interesting

https://www.xda-developers.com/new-wear-os-update-hands-on/

olymay

@olymay

I’ve also just seen this video about Spotify on WearOS (yes, offline playback is finally coming (and YTM too!)) where thet are using a Suunto 7 (and a TWP3) to showcase what WearOS can do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URx8_ZRR7ls&list=WL&index=1&ab_channel=AndroidDevelopers

Aleksander H

@olymay oh yes. I watched it earlier, but I never noticed she was wearing an S7.

I was also able to enable Google Pay and card was successfully transferred (which was not possible earlier). Going to store later today and will try it out

UPDATE: Worked like a charm

JANTIKAINEN

Has Google listed anywhere the added countries where they expanded Gpay?
In Finland so far nothing or at least it still says to me that the service is not supported in my country.