Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
WhatsApp has finally launched its standalone app for smartwatches, running Google’s Wear OS, after much anticipation and months-long beta testing.
Meta CEO, Mr Mark Zuckerberg, on Wednesday, announced the launch of the WhatsApp app for Wear OS that will allow users to start new conversations, reply to messages, and take voice calls without requiring them to have their connected phone with them.
The app, which starts rolling out today for users worldwide, is compatible with smartwatches running Wear OS 3.
It allows users to send and receive text and voice messages as well as emojis and quick replies directly from their wrists.
With this development, Meta gets to expand its wearable presence on an established platform, especially since it stopped its own smartwatch ambitions last year.
This is also a continuation of Google’s push to bolster Wear OS’s third-party app ecosystem. Alongside WhatsApp, the company noted at I/O that Spotify is set to release new Tiles for its Wear OS app this year, while Peloton also recently launched its own Wear OS app.
At its I/O 2023 keynote in May, Google announced that the chat app will be available this July on Wear OS 3 devices, including Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 5 and the Pixel Watch.
It will also be available on other wearable smartwatch brands like the Fossil Gen 6, Montblanc Summit 3 and Citizen CZ Smart Gen 2, among others.
Wear OS is Google’s smartwatch software platform that is available on devices from different brands. Announced in 2021, the latest update to the operating system was co-developed by Samsung and features a new Fitbit health app and refreshed versions of Google’s core apps, like Home and Weather.
WhatsApp this year began to allow users to access their accounts from more than one phone. In an expansion of the multi-device functionality, the company began testing in 2021, users can now sync one account across up to four phones and now with more devices.
