Spotify is supercharging its Wear OS app, with offline syncing available from the wrist.
UPDATE 12 Aug: And the improved app is now rolling out, hot on the heels of the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4.
It will be available in the next 'couple of weeks' and will be available for users of the new Wear 3 and older Wear 2 devices.
After years of barebones functionality on Wear OS, Spotify has added the ability to download playlists, so you can listen without your smartphone present.
Garmin and Samsung devices have both been able to have offline syncing of music, and now the Apple Watch has caught up. But with the Galaxy Watch 4 launching on Wear OS and ditching Tizen, it seems Google has been determined to make sure that the device didn't go backwards in terms of functionality.
Spotify has been on a spree of adding offline downloads and streaming to its smartwatch apps, and the same functionality recently rolled out to the Apple Watch app.
And Deezer has also been doing the same – and after years of inaction and poorly specced smartwatch apps, it seems companies are finally seeing the potential of standalone apps on the wrist.
The news of the Wear OS Spotify update came hot on the heels of Spotify being a central story of improvements to Wear OS at Google I/O.
If you missed it, Wear OS and Samsung’s Tizen are joining to become a unified OS. Aside from being the biggest ever update to Wear OS, the idea is that Samsung (and Fitbit) launching devices onto Wear OS will make the platform much more appealing to users and developers.
Spotify: pic.twitter.com/wpZFJh8hVN
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A revamped Spotify app was a key part of the announcement, and it’s now been revealed it too will allow for offline syncing. That will be in addition to YouTube Music, which will also launch on Wear OS.
This is good news for both platforms, and most of all music fans that want to enjoy the services they pay for away from their smartphone.
How we test
James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.