Google’s Wear OS 2.0 can’t fix its obsolete smartwatch hardware

Google's major Wear OS revamp is out today, and soon it will arrive on most devices released in the past year and a half (although Ars has already spent a week with a pre-release version of the OS). In the face of relentless competition from the Apple Watch Series 4 and Samsung Galaxy Watch, Google's most obvious change in the new Wear OS is a new UI for most of the main screens. There's not much in the way of new functionality or features, but everything is laid out better.

Google hasn't done much to publicize the actual name of this release, but it identifies the update as "Wear OS 2.0" on the "About" page, so we're calling it that. Don't confuse "Wear OS 2.0" with "Android Wear 2.0," though, because the latter launched in 2017. When the name change from "Android Wear" to "Wear OS" happened, the version numbers reset. Android Wear started at "1.0" and made it all the way to "2.9;" Wear OS then started over at "1.0" and counted back up to "2.0." Continuing the old version numbers would have made things a lot easier: Google and terrible branding—name a more iconic duo.