Wear OS users will soon be able to make back-ups of their smartwatch – according to code spotted in the Android OS.
Legendary Google watchers XDA Developers spotted a new feature lurking in a string of code.
They found a reference to “companion_backup_opt_in_title,” and the new menu option to "Back up your device with Google One" in the Google Play Services v22.32.12 beta.
This implies that users will be able to create an image of their smartwatch and upload it to the Google One – the cloud storage service that offers all users 15GB of free storage.
Up until now, if you bought a new smartphone, you’d have to factory reset your Wear OS device – which is clearly not ideal.
What’s more, if you upgrade smartwatches, you’ll also need to start from scratch.
It’s not clear which smartwatches this would roll out to when released. It could be a new feature landing on Wear OS 3.0 – or we could see it land on older Wear OS 2.0 devices.
Google has been busy improving its smartwatch OS, which is slowly rolling out to new devices. It’s powered the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 4, and is on the Montblanc Summit 3.
However, while it’s been promised to roll out to a selection of existing smartwatches – namely the Fossil Gen 6 and TicWatch Pro 3 – it’s still MIA.
Google has also improved the app selection with new quality control guidelines, to make for a better experience.
Overcoming poor elements of the user experience such as backups also brings Wear OS closer to where it needs to be – and not before time.
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.