Wear OS 3 on Mobvoi watches due to arrive in Q3 2023
Numerous watches that used to operate on Wear OS 2 have been upgraded to support the most recent edition of Google’s OS. However, a Mobvoi watch compatible with Wear OS 3 is still awaited. Based on fresh intel, it is anticipated that the updated software will be available in the third quarter of 2023.
Back in 2021, the company announced a few specific models that might receive the upgrade. The eligible devices include the Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 3 GPS, Ticwatch Pro 3 Cellular/LTE and TicWatch E3.
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These watches are candidates because they are powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 4100 platform. What’s more, Google itself has flagged the Ticwatch 3 Ultra as a timepiece that will receive the update.
Unfortunately, there has been no sign of wear OS 3 on a Mobvoi watch, to date. Earlier feedback from the Mobvoi team hinted that support for wear OS 3 will come. No dates have been mentioned, though. And there has been no official announcement from the company.
Today a post appeared in one of Mobvoi’s Facebook groups. A user contacted a Mobvoi sales representative in the Chech Republic to ask about wearOS 3. Here’s the response he received.
“According to information that our product specialist received directly from the maufacturer Mobvoi, the manufacturer decided to assign priority to other projects. The current information is that the update is planned for the third quarter of this year.
The update will only be available for the TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra and TicWatch E3 models.
You can only install certain apps on Wear OS 3
Beyond running outdated software, the problem with wear OS 2 is that certain apps such as Komoot, Strava and Wikiloc do not appear on the Play Store. Those apps have dropped legacy support. And their number is growing.
Actually, you can still run the apps – it is just that Google has pulled them from the app store. So if your wear OS 2 watch already has that software installed, you are good to go. But if you are forced to do a hard-reset of the device and they are deleted – you cannot re-install them from the Play Store. This is a strange move from Google considering the active Wear OS 2 userbase is still quite large.
There are other (unofficial) ways of getting around this. But this is not ideal.
You can, for example, turn on developer mode and then ADB debug via WiFi. As long as you are connected to the same WiFI connection with the phone and the watch, this will allow you to install the software. It can be downloaded from apkmirror. Then it is a matter of clicking on the app in wear OS and installing it to your watch.
The wait should be over soon
As mentioned, there are an increasing number of watches on the market capable of running wear OS 3. Recent additions include the Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition. A number of older Fossil watches have also received the ability to run the new software in the past couple of months.
Hopefully the first wear OS 3 Mobvoi watch with this ability will arrive soon. Most likely we will get a new Mobvoi watch in the months ahead that runs out of the box on the latest version of the operating system. With TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra and TicWatch E3 receiving the update in the latter part of the year.
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