Wear OS getting hardware acceleration for smoother animations

watch.jpg

Android smartphones may already be looking to upgrade to Android 11 soon, but most Wear OS devices are still stuck on Android 9. While there won't be a major overhaul soon, a nice little update is now available. Specifically, Google added hardware acceleration to Wear OS recently.

According to 9to5Google, developers can now use hardware acceleration to improve the graphics rendering in Wear OS apps. This can be applied to watch faces, thereby making the transitions and animations much smoother. Of course, this will only apply to Wear OS devices that are running on Android 9 or later.

However, there's a caveat to this. Hardware-accelerated watch faces could reduce the battery life of the Android watch, especially if they have long animations. Developers would have to create watch faces with the optimal frame draws and animation length to ensure that they don't drain too much battery.

With the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 supposedly launching in July 2020, we're hoping to see some brand-new features. Having said that, what features would you like to see from new Android smartwatches? Let us know on our Facebook page and stay tuned to TechNave.com for more news.