While Wear OS 4 was the good news yesterday, you can expect a few more updates before then, especially with regards to Tiles.
Version 1.2 of the Jetpack Tiles library allows developers to add animations to tiles. There are two in particular:
- Small animations that “create smooth transitions over changes to a part of the layout”, like the goal/state loop often used by fitness apps
- Transition animations will “animate new or disappeared items from the board,” like when you update a weather forecast
In addition, this new library allows tiles that use platform data sources, such as heart rate, step count, or time, to update once per second.
An interesting thing related to this talk is how the box is “updated when it is visible or when it is equidistant from the visible screen.” This may be useful for end users who are arranging tiles.
This is controlled by Wear OS to prevent excessive updates, which can hurt battery performance.
Meanwhile, in addition to Gmail and Google Calendar for Wear OS coming later this year, you can expect new Tiles from Spotify that let you see and start recent podcast episodes, frequently played albums, and access to the Spotify DJ. The WhatsApp beta app also provides a pair of tiles, with another Peloton offering to “track your workout line.”
This comes in light of the “5x increase in the number of active devices running Wear OS” since the launch of Wear OS 3.
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