Wear OS 5 Increases Battery Life, Developer Preview Available Now

Google is releasing the first preview of Wear OS 5, which is expected to significantly improve smartwatch battery life.

While there are certainly some outliers, like the Galaxy Watch 6 series and the TicWatch Pro 5, Wear OS smartwatches aren’t particularly known for their long-lasting batteries. Google’s Pixel Watch 2 manages about 24 hours of wear before needing to be recharged, while many Apple Watch owners get a day and a half (or more) from a single charge. Compare that to the Fitbit Sense 2, which manages to last almost a week without a full charge.

Year after year, Google and its partners, including Samsung, have continued to reduce Wear OS’s battery usage, and this year’s launch is no different. Today, Google unveiled Wear OS 5, the main goal of which is to improve battery life. For example, Google claims that “running a marathon uses up to 20% less energy on Wear OS 5.”

Along the same lines, Google is also pushing developers to create inherently more energy-efficient apps and watch faces. As for watch faces, Wear OS 5 will include a newer version of the watch face format that arrived with Wear OS 4. The format is designed to allow Wear OS itself to optimize watch face performance. shows so developers can focus on design. The new version of the Watch Face Format allows easy access to weather information and adds new styles of complications.

So far, the Watch Face format has been a big success for Wear OS, having been adopted by 30% of watch faces in the Play Store. Google hopes to maintain this momentum by gradually moving developers away from the old style of creating watch faces. Starting with Wear OS 5, some complications will no longer be available for older watch faces. Google Play will also stop accepting new watch faces that don’t use this format, starting in “early 2025.” The company will have an exact date for this write-down near the end of the year.

Another highlight of Wear OS 5 is that it’s built on Android 14, potentially marking the start of a major annual update cycle for Google’s smartwatch platform. In years past, Wear OS has generally won over all other versions of Android. Alternatively, Google could simply try to bring Wear OS in line with its other non-mobile Android variants, like Android TV which also received a preview of Android 14 today.

If you want to start developing for Wear OS 5 (or just try it out for fun), the Developer Preview is available today via Android Studio.