This fall will arrive Wear OS 4 on our connected watches. A new version of the operating system developed by Google which will be accompanied by new features. Among them, the Material You design will become more democratic.
This May 10, Google held its Google I / O, its major annual conference which is an opportunity to make the main announcements. The company briefly presented Wear OS 4, a sequel to Wear OS 3, with the main new features being better battery management and more customizable dials.
To help smartwatch manufacturers prepare their models for Wear OS 4, Google has released an early access version. The journalists of 9to5Google downloaded it and were able to discover some secrets that Google has in store for us, while the latter has not revealed much for the moment.
Material You will land on connected watches
The main change spotted by the English media teams is the arrival of Material You. The parameter ” Enable dynamic theme allows you to use Material You. You can choose one of several color schemes:Honey» for golden tones or «lavenderfor purple hues.
A preview of Material You on Wear OS 4 // Source: 9to5Google
A preview of Material You on Wear OS 4 // Source: 9to5Google
A preview of Material You on Wear OS 4 // Source: 9to5Google
Then, the chosen color scheme applies to many parts of the watch’s user interface. This is for example the case in the quick settings: each button is of the selected color. A change that we see above all in the settings, since in the rest of the applications the dynamic colors are more discreet. It would also seem that this display mode is available for application developers. Hopefully, they’ll integrate Material You into their apps for the most color-consistent experience.
Will Wear OS 4 go further on customizable watch faces?
It’s Material You that is brought to connected watches yes, but not in full. Like a smartphone that would adopt a particular color scheme, you can choose the colors that the interface takes. However, we cannot synchronize them with that of our wallpaper, as is the case on Android.
A preview of Material You on Wear OS 4 // Source: 9to5Google
A preview of Material You on Wear OS 4 // Source: 9to5Google
For example, if you use a dial from the Play Store, the color of the interface returns to the default, namely blue. For9to5Googleon the other hand, “this issue may be resolved for watches that use the standardized Watch Face format”, although they could not verify this. All that remains is to cross your fingers for this to be the case, since it would also make it possible to have a good consistency with the colors of your smartphone.
Do you use Google News (News in France)? You can follow your favorite media. Follow Frandroid on Google News (and Numerama).