Google has added swipeable tiles to Wear OS in a bid to pump some life into their wearable tech platform as the sector continues to grow.
Amid record sales of the Apple Watch and an increasingly smartwatch focused Fitbit rebounding into revenue growth, Google is running the risk of falling further behind on wearables.
The new Tiles feature allows Wear OS users to swipe through widget-like previews of things like weather, heart rate, news headlines, upcoming events and goals, and a stopwatch.
The Tiles will start rolling out to Wear OS smartwatches in the next month, depending on device and region.
Google plans to add further Tiles in the future, but in a wearable sector where it doesn’t sell a device of its own, and Apple’s competing product now offers a built-in and potentially life-saving electrocardiogram, it’s unlikely minor user-experience tweaks will be enough to close the gap between the two.
