Google announced Wear OS 4 as the new version of its wearable platform at Google I/O in May of this year. They then finalized the build and let it ship first on Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 6 line in July before letting Samsung update its Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 4 lines throughout the next several weeks that followed. In October, Google shipped its Pixel Watch 2 running Wear OS 4 and then updated the original shortly after.
Wear OS 4. All of those watches above have Wear OS 4 on them, which is the newest version of Wear OS released for 2023. Keep that in mind as I get to the point of this entire article.
Mobvoi announced today that it is sending out Wear OS 3 to several of its older TicWatch smartwatches. Read that again, carefully. Wear. OS. 3.
For those who have followed the Mobvoi TicWatch world, you likely know that Mobvoi’s software support once a watch has been released is about the worst in the industry. They often launch new watches with all of the specs and current software only to mostly ghost their customers as new updates and features arrive from Google. They take forever to update older watches.
Wear OS 3 was announced in 2021 as some sort of exclusive to Samsung that other Wear OS watchmakers weren’t allowed to release until 2022. Fossil released Wear OS for its watches in 2022, as an example. Google said in 2021 that Mobvoi’s TicWatch Pro 3, TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra, and TicWatch E3 would all be eligible and Mobvoi has talked sporadically about updates for them.
In May of this year, the day before Google announced Wear OS 4, Mobvoi said that they were still very much working on a Wear OS 3 update. It’s embarrassing, yes, but with all of that info in mind we come to today.
The TicWatch Pro 3, TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra, and TicWatch E3 are really getting this update after all this time. Mobvoi has an entire post about it with details on the process, which includes a factory reset of your watch. If you own one of these watches still, you’ll want to read through that.
Will you see Wear OS 4? Hah. Good one.