Google pushed out the first Android P developer preview for Wear OS (the new rebranding for Android Wear) back in March. Now, during I/O 2018, the company has released the second developer preview, also based on Android P.
The new release will enable the Google Assistant on your wrist to show you visual cards, follow-on suggestions, and do text-to-speech translation. There’s also a new enhanced battery saver mode.
When the watch is in this mode it will switch to a new power-efficient watch face and will turn off the touchscreen, as well as the radio and tilt to wake function. To see the time, users will need to press the side button. To switch back to full mode, a long press on the same button will do that for you.
The new DP2 fixes the Wi-Fi connection complaint
You also get Actions on Google, although this is being rolled out to all Wear 2.0 users and is not connected to the Android P base in the new developer preview. Furthermore, Smart Reply, which provides bridged notifications from the user’s smartphone, has now gained support for simplified Chinese.
The new release also undoes a controversial change from the previous preview. Wanting to save power, Google said the watches will not connect to Wi-Fi if disconnected from their smartphone Bluetooth pairing. Well, it seems the community wasn’t too happy about that, so in DP2 Google has reverted the change.
If you want to check out the novelties yourself, you can grab the Wear OS’ Developer Preview 2 from here. Although, it will work only if you have a Huawei Watch 2 or Huawei Watch 2 Classic.
In related news, it seems like Huawei might be in the process of developing a gaming smartwatch of sorts. Apparently, the manufacturer is working on a new operational method that will let users control the device by rotating and stretching the strap itself!
