WearOS’s hardware situation currently is honestly laughable. Sometimes it’s surprising to see the leaps we get in mobile processor power every year and the stagnation in watch processors. The large majority of the smartwatches in 2019 as I write this are powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 2100, released way back in February 2016. If you need perspective, Obama was still president, Harambe was alive and One Direction were still on the charts. And while it might have been the chip to fulfil the needs of the day, it just wasn’t built to last. So as time flew and watches slowed down, the people grew restless. But then there were rumours, and then hope, a new chip was in the works. Could this be the one to save the platform? Well, the fact you’re reading this article is enough proof that nothing changed.

Everyone seemed hyped for the new 3100 chips. After all, newer chips would generally mean faster processing and substantial improvements, right? That’s all the people wanted. That, and an actual usable OS, but let’s get to that later. So, what went wrong?

Simply put, the Snapdragon 3100 barely did justice to a full chip update. It still housed the older 2100 processor with a new coprocessor.

Don’t get me wrong, it was nice to see that WearOS hardware wasn’t all forgotten, but somehow, the improved battery life on Ambient Display and better GPS connectivity wasn’t exactly going to be the white knight when the processing power was still the same.

In the meantime, Apple had released 3 versions of their Watch S chips, each one better than the other. WearOS watch manufacturers couldn’t seem less bothered to push for actual improvements. Also, considering Fossil and Huawei were the only ones that actually put out watches frequently, there just wasn’t enough innovation to justify selling more watches.