The Moto Watch 100 might skip out on Google’s Wear OS entirely for a custom OS

By Michael Allison November 16, 2021

A new Motorola-branded smartwatch, the Moto Watch 100, has been in the works for months now, with the chip shortage being a major factor in its delay. Now, the wearable is on the cusp of launch — and a new leak from Evan Blass (@evleaks on Twitter) says it may not be running Google’s Wear OS as expected.

The Moto Watch 100 is a cheap Motorola-branded watch by CE Brands that’s had some of its specifications leak earlier. As far as hardware goes, it will be quite standard, should the rumors pan out. It’ll be a light watch at 29 grams, with a 355mAh battery and support for Bluetooth 5.0. All the old familiar sensors, from accelerometers to gyroscopes, are there, and it’ll be a fitness-focused watch. What is interesting about this watch is the alleged choice of operating system. Rather than adopting Google’s Wear OS as expected, the Motorola Watch 100 will, according to Blass, run an all-new Moto Watch OS.

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The Motorola Watch 100. — Evan Blass

The Motorola smartwatch brand owner is not the only smartwatch maker to roll out its own operating system. Another prominent Android phone maker, OnePlus, has done so recently with the OnePlus Watch and its real-time operating system (RTOS). The main disadvantage with this approach is that there is a lack of third-party app support compared to more mainstream smartwatches. When one considers how smartwatches end up being used in practice, it may not be such a huge loss if the basic fitness-tracking features sync up with your smartphone.

It may be all the same to your average person, but this poses a challenge for Google despite Samsung recently returning to the fold. Smartphone makers are used to making Android phones simply because they have no real choice. With Wear OS-powered watches being massively outsold by the Apple Watch (and Google’s own lackadaisical treatment of the platform), watchmakers may try to break away from Google.

Even with Google’s Wear OS 3 being by all accounts an excellent revamp, the smartwatch market might still end up fragmented between different unrelated operating systems for the foreseeable future.

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Some of the best smartwatches run Wear OS , and there are loads of apps that add all sorts of handy capabilities. A great Wear OS app does more than just send notifications to your wrist -- they entertain, track your fitness and health, help you to stay organized, and can indirectly save your phone's battery life, as you're checking your wrist rather than your phone's display.

With all of that in mind, here are our picks of the best Wear OS apps. Most of these apps still rely on a partner app on your smartphone, but a few offer stand-alone functionality. Either way, they're all must-haves for your Wear OS smartwatch.

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Google is finally bringing YouTube Music to older Wear OS watches

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Google earlier this year brought the YouTube Music app to Samsung's new Galaxy Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic watches which both run Wear OS 3. It is now doing the same to older Wear OS watches running Wear OS 2. Not all watches will get it at immediately, though. The company will deliver it first to a select few Android smartwatches, before then rolling it out to more devices "later this year" via the Google Play Store.

The initial app rollout will come sometime this week, and it'll hit the Fossil Gen 6 smartwatch (Michael Kors Access 6 version included), the Mobvoi’s TicWatch Pro 3 GPS, the TicWatch Pro 3 Cellular/LTE, and the TicWatch E3. While Google doesn't exactly say it, these watches are all more powerful Snapdragon Wear 4100 watches. It's possible the company still needs more time to optimize the app for older Wear OS watches which typically have much weaker hardware.

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Disappointingly, Wear OS 3 won’t be saving Android smartwatches for a while yet

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It all started out so well. Google working with Samsung and Fitbit on an updated version of Wear OS that would be faster, provide longer battery life, and enable more apps was exactly what we wanted -- an injection of effort, investment, and excitement into a piece of software that had stagnated for too long.

“It’s not just for Google and Samsung,” said Google’s Sameer Samat about Wear OS 3 at Google I/O 2021, putting our minds at rest, “it’ll continue to be available for all.” Excellent news, but what he actually should have said is, "available for all, eventually," because the software we hoped would be the Android smartwatch’s savior in 2021, won’t really be doing much saving for a while yet.
What’s the problem?
Wear OS 3 is available on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic, and that’s the way it looks set to stay until the second half of next year. There’s an argument to be made that it’s right for Samsung to benefit from the software platform it co-developed first, but that’s not the impression Google gave, and not really the idea behind any of Google’s software generally. Android has always been for everyone, while Wear OS 3 isn’t just yet.