What you need to know
- Mobvoi is starting the rollout of Wear OS 3 for the TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra GPS, TicWatch Pro 3 GPS, TicWatch E3, TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra, and TicWatch Pro 3 LTE.
- Although Wear OS 3 was released in 2021, Mobvoi had to "construct an entirely new architecture" to bring the update to these watches.
- Wear OS 3 is a milestone update that brought an assortment of new features and changes, which will now be available on TicWatch series devices.
Owners of eligible Mobvoi smartwatches in the TicWatch series will finally get the update to Wear OS 3, the company announced on Tuesday. Despite Wear OS 3 first releasing back in 2021, it took Mobvoi more than two years to make the update available to device users. Wear OS 3 was a significant update for Google's wearable software, as it brought a design and UI overhaul as well as new features.
The TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra GPS, TicWatch Pro 3 GPS, their respective LTE variants, and the TicWatch E3 will all get the Wear OS 3 update, although the speed of the rollout might vary by device. In other words, the devices receiving Wear OS 3 are all powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 4100 Platform. Mobvoi did not provide any other details about the rollout, however.
When Wear OS 3 was first announced by Google, only a select few existing devices were able to support the update. Though the TicWatch 3 series made that initial list, the Wear 4100 added some difficulty to the Wear OS update.
"Our TicWatch leverages the cutting-edge SDW4100 chipset and a proprietary dual system architecture developed by Mobvoi," said Robert Zhang, Mobvoi's vice president of engineering. "This distinctive combination requires extensive architectural enhancements and performance debugging when transitioning to Wear OS 3, ensuring the delivery of the utmost software quality and user experience."
After upgrading to Wear OS 3, these Mobvoi smartwatches won't work with the Wear OS app on Android. Instead, these TicWatches will be set up with the Mobvoi Health app, which requires Android 8.0 or later. Additionally, users on iOS can still connect with the Mobvoi Health CoPilot app on devices with iOS 16 or newer.
The update's rollout came at a crucial time for the TicWatch 3 series, since support for Wear OS 2 has dwindled. In August, Google announced that it would no longer support Google Assistant on Wear OS 2 devices.
OS upgrades and feature releases have been a bit of a pain point for Mobvoi in the past. Though the newest TicWatch Pro 5 shipped with Wear OS 3.5, it still does not support Google Assistant.
Mobvoi's rollout also started well after Wear OS 4 smartwatches debuted, like Samsung's Galaxy Watch 6 and Google's Pixel Watch 2.
Battery life for days
The new TicWatch Pro 5 is the first of a new class of next-generation Wear OS smartwatches, powered by the latest Snapdragon chipset providing better performance, improved battery life, and enhanced health tracking.
