The Polar M600, which was announced in August of 2016, is on the list of smartwatches slated to get the Android Wear 2.0 update. But there's more to look forward to when the update rolls if you own the GPS fitness watch or were planning on buying it.

Polar has announced that the M600 will be getting Android Wear 2.0, including the Google Assistant, more customizable watch faces, and integrated Google Play Store. The update also improves the battery life to 36 hours, a nice upgrade from the 24 hours that were quoted at launch, especially for those who use more of the sporty and battery-draining features of the M600. There is also a new watch face and more supported languages — Vietnamese, Turkish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, and Danish.

But the more significant non-Wear 2.0 related changes are the new swimming metrics. I find that most activity and sports trackers focus on running and cycling, leaving swimming as an afterthought, which is annoying for someone whose exercise happens mostly inside a pool. So it's nice to see swimming get attention from the Polar team. The M600 will be able to recognize strokes and differentiate between freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly. It will also calculate distance, pace, strokes per minute, and strokes per length pool, i.e. several of the stats that are essential for any swimmer. Speed and SWOLF score aren't mentioned, but those would just be nice bonuses.

There's no clear timeline on the update's release, beyond "spring," so the wait might be short, but it could also be several months long.