Yes, it’s here, for this reality
When Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 debuted last August, it lacked some of the features Google advertised on the Wear OS 3 platform in collaboration with Samsung. The main one is the Google Assistant as a voice assistant option. For the past eight months, our voice option has been Bixby or not. And many of us did nothing in the hope that our assistants would arrive soon. It’s “coming soon” for a long time. Then, in April, I reviewed the first tips for assistant support through Verizon’s Software Update Support page.
Of course, this feature wasn’t really ready, so instead Samsung cursed us with a quick-removed Watch 4 ad showing the Google Assistant. Google I / O told me that it’s finally “this summer”. Apparently, summer starts today. Google and Samsung are finally legally deploying Google Assistant Support for Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 4 Classic in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. (Sorry, India.) Owners download the Google Assistant from the Galaxy Watch 4’s Google Play store and use it to interact with the watch app, answer questions, or set it as an action that keeps the home button pressed. You can do it. Instead of the power menu or Bixby. (Now, if you can set the long press of the back button to Google Pay instead of Samsung Pay …)
The Google Assistant is one of the last Google app holdouts in the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 series, making it even stronger as one of the best Android smartwatches available today. Depending on how the Pixel Watch behaves this fall, the Watch 4 (or its successor, the Galaxy Watch 5), especially the Health Connect, will be available later this year, opening up how the health app works for Android smartwatches. You can run the table for quite some time in between. And with your watch.
Bixby is surprisingly okay these days, but it still relies on training good voice models to recognize it, and the Google Assistant has a much better track record in its department. Of course, more and more devices are using assistants, with a wide range of apps and actions. The Wear OS 2 assistant was great if it worked.Is important If, Not when. Due to the old chipset of most WearOS2 watches, the assistant was slow and therefore had a 30-40% chance of failing. We hope that Google and Samsung have worked to significantly improve speed and experience before deploying on the Watch 4.
The fast and seamless voice assistant experience on Wear OS has long been awaited. I can’t wait to give it a try.
Read next
About the author
