Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 was an exciting development in Android smartwatches because it brought Samsung and Google together to make Google’s watch software platform better. But, weirdly, the best Android watch lacked a major Android feature: Google Assistant. Samsung today said that’s about to change.
The last time Samsung offered direct access to Google on your wrist was the Samsung Gear Live in 2014, which ran on Google’s Android Wear platform and featured a rectangle watch face. After that, Samsung switched to its proprietary Tizen software for its watches, and thereby its own Bixby assistant. But last year, Samsung announced it was returning to Android Wear, now known as Wear OS 3. But Google Assistant was nowhere to be found—watch owners have had to rely on Bixby for months now. Annoyingly, Samsung still hasn’t committed to a timeline for adding Google Assistant, saying only that it would arrive in the “coming months.”
The Google Assistant will live alongside the Bixby digital assistant, and you’ll likely be able to switch between the two, similar to how you can change between the Samsung keyboard app and the Gboard keyboard app.
The Galaxy Watch 4 will also support Android app installs directly from the smartphone. Currently, you have to download Wear OS apps through the watch interface. There is no backup system for those apps on the Samsung watches either, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to back those up with the Wear app on my smartphone.