A feature that Google and other manufacturers have been utilizing for a few years now, to get around the long process of getting OTA updates rolled out to devices has now made its way to smartwatches. According to one of the developers on the Android Wear team, smartwatches with Android Wear 2.0 included can get updates straight from the Google Play Store when the Android Wear companion app is updated. This means that the team can push out smaller updates without needing to push out an entire OTA to every smartwatch out there (which also needs to be approved by its partners before it goes out).
Just last week, Android Wear got an update through the Play Store, and according to the team it brought along third party chat app support in Contacts, it also reduced accidental entry into the watch face picker, improved Play Store discoverability for new users and also had a slew of other features and bug fixes included. While that wasn’t a huge update, it was a big enough one to roll out to users, and thanks to the Android Wear companion app that is available on the Play Store, the team was able to push it out to everyone, basically simultaneously. So there was no need for users to be checking for updates on their watches, like they’ve had to do with software updates, like to Android Wear 2.0.
Android Wear 2.0 has been rolled out to many devices already, and there are a few that still don’t have it, but will get it in the near future. But it was a huge update to the wearable platform from Google. It basically redesigned the entire operating system that’s on your wrist and changed how many things were done. One of those being the fact that Google can now push updates through the Android Wear app from Google Play. Of course there are some others that most users will be more excited about like Android Pay and the Google Assistant. But this does show that Google is still committed to Android Wear, even though it has been quite some time since there was a major update to the platform.