Android Wear 5.0 came out last month—it was the third noteworthy update to the wearable OS, following versions 4.4W.1 and 4.4W.2. It's not a significant enough update to merit its own standalone review, but it's been a while since our last check-in with the platform. Plus, the launch of the Apple Watch is just a few months away at most.

Google also recently sent us another Android Wear watch we hadn't seen before—LG's G Watch R, the round version of the regular square G Watch we looked at back when Android Wear launched. It looks more like a finished product today, where as the first G Watch looked like no-frills development hardware. The G Watch R also doesn't use the old power-hungry internals that give the Moto 360 so many problems.

So armed with a new watch and new software, we spent a full month wearing Android Wear to get a sense of how far it's come since its original release a little over six months ago. While not all of our initial complaints have been addressed, not by a long shot, there are definitely signs of progress.

Android Wear 5.0, specifically

While the “base” version of Android upon which Android Wear is based has increased from 4.4W.2 to 5.0.1, tapping on that version number in the Settings shows that the proper Android Wear version number has only jumped from 1.01 to 1.05. The latter number is more indicative of the kind of changes you can expect. This isn't a KitKat to Lollipop-sized jump, but a more incremental improvement.

Most of Android Wear’s general look and feel remains the same. After using three different watches with different specs running both the old software and the new, we believe most people won’t notice any drastic performance or battery life improvements. If you’re holding on to hope that a software update is going to magic three-day battery life into your Moto 360, those kinds of magic bullets just don’t exist.

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

What Google has spent its time doing is smoothing down some of the rough corners of the OS. The changes do make the watches a bit more versatile and nice to use, but they add even more directional swiping to the pile of gestures and toggles you already need to master for Android Wear use.

Swiping down from the top of the screen used to be a quick switch that would mute and unmute the phone and show you the current battery percentage, but in 5.0 it becomes a full-fledged quick settings menu. In addition to muting and unmuting notifications, Wear 5.0 supports Lollipop's "priority notifications" feature that lets you mute notifications from any app not on your phone's whitelist. We'd still like these settings to be even more granular—for example, if I want Gmail notifications from certain senders in Priority mode but not from others, getting these notifications is still an all-or-none proposition—but it's a first step toward keeping the watch useful while also keeping it from vibrating your wrist off.

There are three other panes in the new Quick Settings menu. "Theater mode" will quickly turn your watch's screen off, mute notifications, and keep it from waking when you move your wrist, keeping the watch from distracting you or others in an otherwise dark room. "Sunlight mode" is a quick toggle that will max out the watch's brightness for a few seconds, long enough to view the time or address some notifications in direct sunlight without killing the battery. And the final pane is a simple way to access the watch's settings screen, which previously required a voice command.

In Android Wear 4.4, swiping away a notification meant it was gone forever. The new version will let you swipe upward and tap a button to recall the notification. These are on a timer, though—if you fail to recall the notification within a couple of seconds of dismissing it, it's still gone. This gesture is not particularly intuitive or discoverable, and we occasionally brought up the "Dismissing..." dialog without intending to.

There are some small changes to the Android Wear companion app, mostly related to the new third-party watch faces. When connected to a watch running Android Wear 5.0, you can change the watch screen directly from the phone, and download and install new faces from Google Play (changing the face directly on the watch is still possible, and you even get a new "recent" section that you can use to hop around between recently used watch faces more quickly.

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Third-party watch faces can each include different settings. Some of these are as simple as changing the color of the watch hands, but other faces will let you pick and choose the data you want the watch to display (battery life, step count, and so on) and how many things you want to show up in Ambient Mode. Sometimes these settings are accessible directly on the watch as well, but more complicated watch faces will only let you see the full range of settings in the companion app on your phone or tablet.

Third-party watch faces are a small change, but it's arguably the most important one in Wear 5.0. Smartwatches need to be half gadget and half fashion accessory, and changing what is displayed on the watch face at will make your watch feel more like your smartwatch and not just a smartwatch. After using multiple Android Wear watches, it's been frustrating to find a face we liked on one watch that wasn't available on others. This doesn't fix the problem for built-in watch faces, but it's at least a partial solution.

This update makes Android Wear more pleasant to use overall but, as we'll see, it doesn't really make Android Wear do anything that it didn't do already.

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham