Wear OS 3 is finally on its way to other smartwatches, but its first new option is lacking a major feature. The Montblanc Summit 3 lacks support for Google Assistant entirely.
Announced last month, the Montblanc Summit 3 is a luxury smartwatch running Wear OS 3, the first smartwatch outside of Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 lineup to use the OS to date. The short story on the watch is that it runs with a Snapdragon 4100+, has a new companion app for setup, and Wear OS 3 in a relatively stock form, just with several of Montblanc’s apps pre-installed.
In a video from our friend Michael Fisher, it’s been fully confirmed that the Montblanc Summit 3 launches without support for Google Assistant in any capacity. That’s certainly a shocker, as Google Assistant has been a core part of Wear OS for years now.
Why?
Unfortunately, there’s no clear answer on that just yet. Fisher says that he got the impression that Montblanc would have included Google Assistant on the Summit 3 if it were available, and Google only offered a generic response when asked about the state of the voice assistant on this watch in particular.
Our priority with Wear OS is to deliver a high performing platform for our partners and users, and we are taking the time to ensure our apps and services deliver a quality experience. We have nothing more to share at this time.
Also gone is Wear OS’s left-most screen that showed contextual information akin to the Google Now of yesteryear, but that was long-suspected in early Wear OS 3 previews. Rather, Google has opted to use both sides of the watchface for Tiles, with swipes up or down reaching the quick settings and notifications as was the case previously.
It’s probably safe to speculate that, going forward, Google Assistant on Wear OS is going to behave a lot more like what we see on the Galaxy Watch 4 series – an app that can be triggered using hardware keys or hotwords, rather than a core part of the operating system. In that light, it makes sense why it’s not pre-loaded on the Montblanc Summit 3, but it certainly has us curious where Google Assistant will be available – and even more so where it won’t – on future Wear OS 3 products.
You can check out Fisher’s full hands-on with the Summit 3 below, and we’re hoping to get our hands on the product soon!
More on Wear OS:
- Comment: Wear OS is finally getting a chance to thrive
- Montblanc offers a good look at Wear OS 3 without Samsung’s skin [Video]
- Mobvoi teases its next Ticwatch, powered by Wear OS and the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1
Author: Ben Schoon
Source: 9TO5Google
