This week was presupposed to be the primary day of Google’s large reentry into flagship smartwatches. Samsung is again on board after years of Tizen-based wearables, with its new Galaxy Watch 4 that runs the brand new, revitalized Wear OS 3. It’s the smartwatch OS that merges the perfect of Google and Samsung’s discrete platforms collectively.

But there was only one concern: Google was surprisingly absent from the proceedings. In truth, other than a couple of indirect mentions of working with Google on the software program, you might need watched Samsung’s complete presentation and never even caught that the brand new watches had been working on Wear OS in any respect.

On the one hand, that is extraordinarily par for the course for Samsung. It’s virtually a working gag at this level that Samsung goes out of its solution to keep away from mentioning Google or Android when it discusses its new telephone releases. And certainly, the Galaxy Z Flip 3 and Fold 3 sections had been filled with reward for Samsung’s One UI, with nary a point out of Android 11 or Android 12 or any enhancements Google has been making on an OS degree to allow these gadgets to work higher.

Seeing the same dynamic right here with the Galaxy Watch and Wear OS 3 — one which targeted extra on Samsung’s One UI enhancements and software program layer greater than something that the brand new Google collaboration permits — is smart given Samsung’s historical past.

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

But the Samsung-heavy announcement highlights simply how a lot of an uphill battle Google has right here, and the way a lot it’s going to must depend on Samsung (which has very totally different objectives than Google) because it seems to revitalize its wearables.

And it’s exhausting to have a look at the Galaxy Watch 4 as something aside from a compromise of a tool for Google. It’s a flagship Wear OS 3 watch that runs Samsung’s UI on high, gained’t ship with Google Assistant, and comes full of default apps that compete with Google’s personal providers.

The default well being monitoring app on Wear OS is Samsung Health. And the default cost app? Samsung Pay. The default assistant? Bixby. The record of default apps goes on: Messages, Photos, Calendar, Clock, Music and extra are all Samsung’s model. You can manually set up Google’s model of those apps, nevertheless it’s a problem.

It could also be Google’s working system, however that is positively Samsung’s watch.

And whereas Samsung is arguably a extra egocentric accomplice than Google could have hoped for to relaunch its Wear OS platform, Google additionally doesn’t have a lot of a alternative. The record of Wear OS companions in 2021 isn’t lengthy or distinguished. Motorola and LG haven’t made smartwatches in years, OnePlus, ​​RealMe, and Oppo are all utilizing their very own working techniques, and Fitbit — whereas now owned by Google — has but to embrace Google’s working system in any respect.

In 2021, your greatest guess for a Wear OS watch is both TicWatch or Fossil, which — whereas having achieved an admirable job of making an attempt to hold the platform up to now — aren’t the sort of large identify companions on the caliber of Samsung. Neither of these firms seems able to launch a Wear OS 3 look ahead to a while, both, with Fossil already confirming that its vacation releases will nonetheless be caught on the outdated Wear OS platform. (With upgrades coming someday subsequent 12 months.)

There’s added confusion, too: Samsung’s Galaxy Watch, for instance, will use Samsung Health for at the least a few of its health providers. You can set up Google Fit, nevertheless it feels prefer it’s tacked on this watch. And as far as we will inform, you can’t change from Samsung Pay to Google Pay or from Bixby to the Google Assistant on this watch. And the Galaxy Watch gained’t work with iOS gadgets, one thing that Google gained’t make clear as restricted to simply Samsung’s mannequin or a possible restrict of all Wear OS 3 watches.

So what does Google get out of the Galaxy Watch? Well, on the finish of the day, the brand new Wear OS-powered Galaxy Watch is on Google’s OS and does depend on essential Google providers just like the Play Store for apps. It’s extra appropriate with non-Samsung Android telephones and can work with Google providers like Maps and Gmail (even when a few of these should face Samsung-branded competitors).

Additionally, the Wear OS smartwatch market continues to be fairly stagnant proper now, so it’s not like Google has something to lose by letting Samsung do a closely Samsung-focused watch. Anyone who buys into the Galaxy Watch 4 is one other person to assist bolster the Play Store, and a much bigger viewers for builders seeking to spend money on Google’s platform.

Plus, with Google’s previous investments in smartwatches (a listing that features its $2.1 billion buy of Fitbit and a mysterious $40 million acquisition from Fossil in 2019), it’s potential the present established order gained’t final without end. If Apple and Samsung have proven something, it’s that typically one of the simplest ways to get an incredible smartwatch is to simply do it your self — and the upcoming Pixel 6 looks like it might use an identical high-end smartwatch to go together with it.

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