Mobvoi’s TicWatch smartwatches are finally getting Wear OS 3

Summary

• TicWatch is finally rolling out the long-awaited stable Wear OS 3 update for its wearables after a lengthy delay.
• Wear OS 3 brings significant improvements to the TicWatch experience, including smoother animations and access to new apps and watch faces.
• TicWatch users will need to switch to the Mobvoi Health app on Android to manage their smartwatches after the update, as the Wear OS by Google app will no longer be compatible with updated devices.

Google released Wear OS 3 in 2021 with the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4. The company also quickly confirmed the list of smartwatches that would get the Wear OS 3 update, which included several wearables from TicWatch. It has been over two years since then, and TicWatch has yet to roll out Wear OS 3 to its watches. Mobvoi released a closed beta in June 2023 but has been silent since then. Thankfully, the patience of TicWatch users is finally paying off, as the company is rolling out the stable Wear OS 3 update for its wearables.

Starting today, Wear OS 3 is rolling out for the TicWatch Pro 3, Pro 3 Ultra, and TicWatch E3, including their LTE models. The company does not directly address the lengthy delay but notes that the “intricate nature of this update necessitated the engineering team to construct an entirely new architecture, which is comparable to developing a novel software structure for the Wear OS 3 system.”

Wear OS 3 should dramatically improve the experience on your TicWatch. Besides navigational and performance improvements with smoother animations, Wear OS 3 will provide access to new apps and watch faces. Mobvoi has not clarified whether the update will have Google Assistant access, though. Given the voice assistant is also missing on the TicWatch Pro 5, don’t be too optimistic about it being available on the older watches.

All TicWatch models will continue to work with iPhones after the update. On Android, you have to switch to the Mobvoi Health app to manage the smartwatch, as the Wear OS by Google app will stop functioning.

Mobvoi was pretty much the only company left to fulfill its update promise for Wear OS 2 watches. Fossil also took a while but was still a lot faster by comparison when it updated its Gen 6 smartwatches to Wear OS 3 in October 2022, albeit without Google Fit and Assistant. More recently, the company released Wear OS 3.5 for its watches, though the firmware has been plagued with bugs and stability issues.

Existing TicWatch users have given the company a lot of flak for the excessive delay in the Wear OS 3 rollout. Worse than the delay was the lack of transparency from Mobvoi’s side, as it did not provide regular updates to customers.

Given that Wear OS 3 took over two years to land, the company might not bring Wear OS 4 to its existing wearables. And if it does decide to update some models, here’s hoping this will happen a lot faster, especially since Mobvoi claims to have developed a “new architecture” that Wear OS 3 necessitated.

The update starts rolling out today, but it may not show up immediately on your watch due to this being a stages release that rolls out in phases.