Samsung finally gave us a glimpse of its upcoming Google-based smartwatch platform at MWC 2021. The smartwatch wasn’t released today but is expected to launch later this summer at a proper Galaxy Unpacked event. Google showed what the new One UI Watch software will look like and what this new Google-Samsung partnership means for the Galaxy watches.
The partnership was first announced by Google at Google I/O 2021 developers conference and with their new OS they could potentially take on the Apple watches. At the virtual MWC, Samsung displayed how it is working with Google to make the smartwatch’s UI more intuitive and feature-rich. One UI Watch won’t be what all smartwatches built on the new unified Google / Samsung platform look like — it’s an added layer on top specifically for Samsung devices, similar to Samsung’s OneUI.
Coming to the new design, the settings menu now looks much similar to the phone’s settings menu. If you have additional time zones set on your clock app, they will be present on the smartwatch as well. The blocked callers on the phone will now be blocked on the watch as well. Samsung also showed off a new watch face design tool, which will be available for Android developers later this year to easily create new watch faces for the platform.
Samsung also took a page from Apple’s book. Much like Apple Watches, when you install a smartwatch compatible app on your phone, the corresponding smartwatch app will automatically install on the watch as well.
The new One UI Watch experience is expected to make its first debut on Samsung wearables at a Samsung Unpacked event later this year.
