Why Android Wear had to change

Looking back at the history of mobile operating systems, we see that the first couple of them, mainly developed within the late 20th century, we not necessarily developed for smartphones or tablets, but rather personal digital assistants (PDAs). While there wasn't a noticeable different at first, the difference began to show more. As more time went on, these operating systems struggled to keep up with those based off of code made for heavier computing. Operating systems such as Palm OS, BlackBerry OS, and Windows Mobile heavily suffered from these, and led to the companies replacing them with the more modern WebOS, BlackBerry 10, and Windows Phone operating systems, respectively. Although, many of those which took longer to change, such as Symbian, went from dominance to non-existence. Android Wear almost suffered the same fate.

In the modern age, smartwatches and other wearable technologies ("wearables") are still a relatively new concept. The operating systems which adopted them included Android, which was modified in the form of Android Wear. This iteration of the system was shrunken over time, and used similar versions of the same Android features, rather than ones built specially for the new trend. Although this may have led to consistency with the smartphone platform, it led to holding the new one back.

Android Wear devices mainly only worked well with devices running the Google Android operating system, and was very limited when paired with devices running Apple's iOS; however, refused to function with other operating systems completely. Also, although some of the system's faults can be blamed on lack of optimization, the real culprit is the fact that the code was never originally made to work on wearables.

The system's biggest competitor, watchOS from Apple, was also built off the basis of its mobile platform, but in contrast is its own operating system built for the specific purpose to be on the face of your smartwatch. Even Samsung's Tizen, which also leads ahead of the Android-based platform, is optimized for a majority of different devices, due to a flexible common framework.

Google recently took action to fix the issue, by modifying parts of the operating system to be specific to the wearable operating system, a big part of why it suffered beforehand. In addition to that, it also renamed the wearable platform from Android Wear to Wear OS. Despite the name, it is still the wearable version of the traditional Android operating system, but now consists of its own true versions and individuality from being apart of a smartphone operating system. As technology advances, so does the systems, with the risk of being left behind. Although Wear OS has a lot of catching up to do, with its wide range of partners, it should be able to reach the same level of the others soon enough; as long as it doesn't become the modern Symbian.