Nobody knows yet which side will "win" internally. Wear OS is Android-based and a Google product. It's also universally accepted as garbage: Even Android Police bloggers trash on the state of Wear OS. Fitbit is a better platform that has vastly more users and performs better. But it's not Googley at all, so if Google keeps it, there will likely be a lot of changes.
Wear OS needs work but it's not garbage. Given enough RAM it's usable. The Fossil Gen 5 for example is somewhat fine. The issue is more with Qualcomm releasing garbage CPU. Google releasing a watch would help in the same way the Nexus line helped with phones.
What WearOS needs is man power and an easier time getting the fix they need in the Android tree. It's not however a lost cause. With the improved activity monitoring provided by Fitbit it could be nice.
This is the problem. A smartwatch should not be burning a lot of RAM. It has a battery the size of a dime, it should be doing very little with processor or memory. Wear OS is too bloated to the task.
> A smartwatch should not be burning a lot of RAM.
Then again, the Gen 5 has 1Go and works fine. That's the same amount than an Apple watch serie 4/5.
> It has a battery the size of a dime, it should be doing very little with processor or memory.
Wear OS is far from perfect but that's more on the Snapdragon 3100. Samsung and Apple CPU are far better but they don't sell them.
It's very much a chicken and egg situation. Qualcomm doesn't invest because there is not market and there is no market because poor CPUs lead to products which are not competitive. Google could have unlocked the situation but I guess they were wainting for the Fitbit acquisition to go through before going back to wearables.
Qualcomm isn't the only microprocessor vendor. And even if it was, imagine this call:
"Hi, Qualcomm, this is Rick Osterloh from Google. How much money would we need to invest for you to release a smartwatch processor that isn't garbage?"
"Hey Rick. We'd need about $$$$."
"Great, I work for a trillion-dollar company."
Which is to say, Google has the money and power to literally make what it wants happen, if it isn't happening, it's not reasonable or logical to blame another party. It is fundamentally a lack of commitment by Google to support their product line.
Well, actually, on this segment, they kind of are.
> It is fundamentally a lack of commitment by Google to support their product line.
Yes, I think I did say that repeatedly in the post you are answering. I also talked about the Nexus line. The again, Google did buy a giant of the wearable and fitness industry. It's just that the acquisition took a lot longer than expected.
Still, I was initially answering someone calling Wear OS garbage. It is in need of more developers and working on suboptimal hardware however.
