Recently, an established smartwatch manufacturer released their latest product in overseas markets.
This new watch is equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon W5+ Gen1 main controller, which is still the strongest in the Android camp, and uses the brand's unique dual-layer screen (OLED color screen on the bottom and a low-power monochrome screen on top) design, while also providing a 2GB+32GB storage combination, 5ATM deep waterproof and a sufficiently high-capacity battery. In addition to the fact that the watch body material (aluminum + glass fiber plastic + fluoroelastomer) is not high-end enough, it seems that everything is pretty good? Until noticing the OS version of this model.
Yes, this latest Android smartwatch, which was just released in early May 2024, still uses WearOS 3, which was launched in mid-September 2022, instead of WearOS 4, which has been implemented in other "Google Watches" in September 2023 or will be updated soon.
Not to mention that in the current large number of leaks, it is shown that as soon as mid-May this year, Google may announce the next generation of WearOS 5.
So what does this mean? Obviously, in terms of the product itself, this new smartwatch that has just been launched can in no way be said to be "without problems". But why does it appear that the new product in 2024 is equipped with the old version of the operating system in 2022, and the reason is obviously worth exploring.
You might as well think about it backwards, why in today's smartphone industry, it is rare to see this phenomenon of new products on the market, but equipped with old versions of the system?
It's very simple, first of all, because most of the current smartphone operating systems themselves will have a design that "reduces the difficulty of updating". For example, today's Android system decouples the driver from the system version, which means that the new version of the system can be directly run with the old driver, in case there are some older hardware in the mobile phone, there is no need to worry about the new version of the system "driver". And the current Android system also has the AB partition of the "bottom" design, which greatly improves the security of system updates, theoretically can completely avoid the possibility of data loss caused by updates, and even the new system has a bug to break the phone.
Secondly, this is also because today's smartphone chip manufacturers have a much more positive attitude towards "new system adaptation" than in the past. Whenever a new SoC hits the market, chip manufacturers generally work with mobile phone manufacturers to adapt the latest version of the system to it more quickly. When the new version of the system is released, as long as the SoC is not too unpopular, it will generally get the release of the new driver, so that the mobile phone manufacturer can complete the update of the old model to the new system faster.
In the past, "not being able to update the system" was not a big deal in the mobile phone industry, but now it is not
Finally, of course, this is also related to the importance that consumers now attach to the topic of "mobile phone system update". You must know that many years ago, there was a situation in the mobile phone industry where manufacturers first "promised to update", and then reversed themselves on the grounds of "insufficient configuration". However, the user discussion environment at that time was not as developed as it is now, so the relevant brands did not suffer any losses afterwards.
But what about now? Since the advent of forums and social media, sometimes even a model with a slow system update, or a very old (but once hot) model with a suspended system update, may trigger "verbal criticism" from users and the media. Therefore, major brands are not only generally more active in the update of mobile phone systems, but also often use this as a propaganda point, which in turn promotes the enthusiasm of the mobile phone industry for "system updates" and "system adaptation".
But what about smartwatches? If you use the mobile phone industry to analogy with the smart watch industry, it is actually easy to find the problem.
First of all, the smart watch industry has not formed a clear consumer demand for "performance" and "hardware (computing power) specifications" like on mobile phones for many years. Many smart watch products with a good reputation and extremely high prices are not necessarily equipped with the latest SoC solutions. Because consumers often value health, exercise monitoring features, and even their decorative attributes.
So this creates a problem, that is, the smart watch industry's demand for "chip replacement" itself is not so urgent. Even the Snapdragon W5+ Gen1, which is currently recognized as the highest-performing Snapdragon in the Android watch field as mentioned above, has actually been released in July 2022, almost two years ago. This also means that when manufacturers use this "old chip" to launch new products in 2024, the operating system-related information they get may indeed be WearOS 3 in 2022, rather than WearOS 4 or the latest WearOS 5.
Of course, everyone may still have doubts here, that is, won't chip manufacturers update their system adaptation information? The answer is yes, but it's likely to be limited for other reasons.
WearOS is now not only closed-source, but also a collaboration between Google and Samsung
After all, on the one hand, the current official Android smartwatch operating system (i.e., WearOS) is not open source, but a closed-source ecosystem authorized by Google. Therefore, chip manufacturers may not be able to directly obtain the code of the latest version of the system and provide it directly to the corresponding smart watch manufacturers. Google itself is more likely to decide which version of the system a smartwatch brand can use (i.e., Google lets you use the old version, obviously you can't get the new version of the system, even if the hardware is up-to-date).
On the other hand, friends who pay attention to the previous related content of our Sanyi life may remember that since WearOS 3, the "Google Sheet" system does not completely belong to Google at the root, because it also incorporates some of the code and functions of Samsung TizenOS. So not only has this created a situation where Samsung has always been able to launch and monopolize the latest version of WearOS until now, but it may also bring some potential intellectual property issues.
WearOS 5 is still expected to be first released by Samsung, and after that other brands may not popularize WearOS 4 until then
To put it more bluntly, even if other smartwatch manufacturers want and have the ability to launch smartwatches equipped with WearOS 4 and even WearOS 5, there may be "double obstacles" from Google and Samsung. In addition, most of the consumer groups of smart watches do not care much about "whether the system is new enough". So it's not surprising that new products released in 2024 will be equipped with 2022 chips and operating systems.
[The picture in this article comes from the Internet]