In the lead up to the Pixel Watch, several first-party apps were overhauled and launched to invigorate Wear OS, and Google is planning to continue that momentum with Gmail and Calendar.
Neither have existed on the wearable platform in a reflection of Google’s preference for and reliance on rich notifications from your phone to handle either functionality.
Today, the calendar experience on the Pixel Watch is also taken care of by an Agenda app, which can be accessed from a tile that shows your next event or various watch face complications. You can open an event to see all details, but the app itself only shows three days worth of appointments — which is not nearly enough. Creating a new event is entirely handled by Google Assistant and a voice workflow.
Agenda lacks a basic month or week view, with Samsung already providing a full app on the Galaxy Watch.
Agenda tile and “app”
Galaxy Watch Calendar app
Meanwhile, email is entirely handled by notifications. You can only access them from the main notifications feed, and once they’re gone there’s no inbox view to return to. This experience pales in comparison to Outlook for Wear OS and the Apple Watch’s full client.
Since our recent post advocating for both apps on the platform, we’ve learned that Google is testing both Gmail and Calendar for Wear OS. The experience has been described as “full” to us, though we weren’t able to find out whether this involves event creation or composing new emails. Meanwhile, testing is unsurprisingly occurring on the Pixel Watch.
Apple Watch Mail app and Outlook for Wear OS
In terms of Workspace apps, Gmail and Calendar would join Google Keep, which lets you browse your main notes feed and quickly creates new ones, including lists. There’s also Google Contacts, which was introduced recently and complements the revamped Messages and Phone clients.
More on Wear OS:
- What would you change about Google’s Pixel Watch faces?
- Do you like Wear OS 3’s UI and navigation on the Pixel Watch?
- What Wear OS 3 and Pixel Watch features have not yet launched
Author: Abner Li
Source: 9TO5Google
