this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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I think they're trying to kill the fitbit line and replace it with the pixel watch and WearOS
My reasoning:
Enshittification of the non-watch devices
Pixel Watch 2 actually being an improvement on 1, they don't always do that
PW2 just being their highest end fitbit + watch
Many people I know who had fitbits decided to move over to a smartwatch for convenience of other features at not that much increased cost. It could be that offering devices below a watch has become less worth it in their eyes and to be something left to other niche manufacturers.
WearOS in general has seen massive improvements over AndroidWear and I think they're hoping that the license fees they'll get from third party cheaper watchmakers that end up using WearOS. Kinda like what they do with Android, offer an expensive top of the line flagship device, maybe a middle ground option, and leave it to the niche companies willing to do the work to find out what exact features people want on the cheap end while bringing in their licensing and app store fees.
It worked for phones, I can see it working for this kind of device, but it means dropping the old "lesser" line of devices
One big appeal of Fitbit has always been the battery life of several days. If you want to track your health through the day and night, a Pixel watch that won't even get through a single day on a charge is pretty useless. Same with all the other Android Wear watches.
Agreed. If Fitbit has smart watches that do roughly what WearOS does, with 5x the battery life at half the cost, WearOS will be hard to sell.
You have to pay to use wearOS? It's the first I've heard of it, but it sounds really scammy.
I think they are referring to licensing fees from watch manufacturers.
Yes, why should they need a license fee to use wearOS, which I thought was open source like android?
exactly: It's "open source" like android. The core android is open source (in many cases because they are required to), but that does not include anything that makes the actual system work for normal users. The core android is open source ("Android Open Source Project"), but that includes practically nothing: Essentially the stuff that is in there are things that have to be open source (like the linux kernel they use). However, if you want to have the system "practically useable" you need a lot more, which is usually the "Google Mobile Services", which are proprietary. You are also generally required to install all items in the GMS, i.e. even if you only need the play store, you still have to install google chrome.
Further, the android name and logo are trademarked by google, so even if you want to roll your own android, you would not be allowed to call it android. WearOS is essentially the same thing: The android subsystem is open, the actual thing you call WearOS (plus trademarks, etc.) are not.