Wear OS 5 Is All About Improving Battery Life, And Its First Developer Preview Is Now Here

If you like Wear OS, then you’ll be glad to know that battery life is about to get significantly improved.

Key Takeaways

Wear OS 5 improves battery life by 20%, making it more efficient for tracking activities like running marathons.
Developers will benefit from improvements to Watch Face Format and support for larger displays on Wear OS 5.
Google Pixel smartphones will have access to Android 15 Beta 2, continuing to stay ahead with the latest updates.

Wear OS is the Android-based operating system that powers watches from the likes of Google and Samsung, and Wear OS 5 has just been announced at this year’s Google I/O. It’s based on Android 14, and the big improvement is in battery life. Google says that running and tracking a marathon on Wear OS 5 will use 20% less power than on Wear OS 4, meaning that you’ll get even more battery life out of your smartwatch

Wear OS 5 doesn’t have many other changes — for now

In terms of changes for end users though, that’s about it. Android 14 promised improved battery life in smartphones and it seems that those changes are benefitting smartwatches, too. The other changes that the company has included relate to developers, such as improvements to the Watch Face Format, a format introduced with Wear OS 4 for developers to make watch faces. Google says 30% of watch faces on the Google Play Store are already using it.

Other improvements include support for larger displays, support for testing health services in Android Studio (where you can set specific values to see how they display in Tiles), and more. Plus, we presume that other Android 14 features will arrive under the hood, though it remains to be seen what exactly Google will pull in.

Google hasn’t said how you’ll be able to try out this developer preview, aside from saying that there will be a Wear OS 5 Android Virtual Device through Android Studio, so you can run it in an emulator. Wear OS 4 was never tested on the Pixel Watch, instead, it was simply released as a stable version when it was ready. There were leaks suggesting that it may come to the Pixel Watch, but then it never did. In other words, unless otherwise stated, we can assume that Google will be doing the same here, too.

Google also announced at Google I/O/ that Android 15 Beta 2 was coming to Google Pixel smartphones and other partner OEMs, meaning more people will be able to get a taste of Android 15.