Google has launched the third developer preview of Android Wear 2.0 today but it has also confirmed that the final release has been delayed. The company confirmed today that the developer preview program for the second major iteration of its wearable device OS is now going to continue into 2017 as the final release is not going to take place before next year.
To be fair, the company didn’t release provide a confirmed release date for Android Wear 2.0 when the update was formally unveiled earlier this year. The original schedule was to put the update through 30 weeks of alpha and beta tests which would have put the launch in December this year.
Google has said that it has received a lot of great feedback from the developer community about this iteration of Android Wear and that it’s pushing the preview program into early 2017 to improve and iterate on the feedback so that it can provide a great user experience.
It merits mentioning here that some of the biggest OEMs that worked with Google to create Android Wear smartwatches are not going to release any new products in what’s left of this year. Google may have wanted to launch Android Wear 2.0 with a couple of new models but that doesn’t appear to be a possibility now.
Perhaps Google will now wait until early next year when at least some of its partners find it feasible to launch a new smartwatch that comes with Android Wear 2.0 straight out of the box.
Filed in . Read more about Android Wear, Android Wear 2.0, Google and Wearable Tech. Source: techcrunch