The smartwatch market has been on the rise for several years. The main mobile phone brands tend to dress up their presentations with a watch, a bracelet or headphones, which will help them complement increasingly stagnant sales.
Smart watches, which always depend on a phone to be able to activate, configure and function on a day-to-day basis, usually have their own operating system, in keeping with the brand that drives it. For example, the Apple Watch works with iOS, Huawei watches have the Harmony system and the Google Pixel Watch works with the WearOS system. Let’s stay with the latter.
The first versions of WearOS were intentionally called Android Wear, with the aim of setting up Google’s own ecosystem and competing head-to-head with Apple. It was an obvious declaration of intent that did not quite materialize until three years ago when they decided to reinvent it with the name we know today.
There were several brands that decided to incorporate WearOS into their smartwatches, such as Xiaomi, Oppo, Samsung, Fossil or TicWatch, among others. Along with iOS, it is one of the most complete on the market and users are satisfied with its versatility.
Hundreds of applications can be installed on these watches from the Play Store, which can also be accessed from the wearable. But if there has been a messaging app that has been missing from the start, it has been WhatsApp. Notifications could be received and interacted with, but there was no official, native WhatsApp app for smartwatches… until now.
For now, it can only be installed by users who are part of the WhatsApp beta program, that is, of the preliminary version that some volunteers test at their own risk and expense before the final update is released for everyone. Those who do not see WhatsApp in the Play Store on their watch will have to wait a few weeks until it is available. It should be added that the application only works with version 3 or higher of WearOS (present in the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and 5, and in the imminent TicWatch Pro 5).
Those who meet the characteristics should only go to the Play Store, search for WhatsApp and install it as they do with any other app. When opening it, a code will appear and we will receive a notification on the phone, which will allow us to enter the code and validate our session.
Once the code is entered, the chats will begin to load, just as it happens when we log in to WhatsApp Web or on a tablet.
The arrival of WhatsApp on WearOS brings with it several functions that to date could not be executed from the watch. The most anticipated is the compatibility with voice notes: it is already possible to send and receive them, listen to them on the wrist and even speed them up as we do on mobile.
Secondly, it is now possible to access all the conversations we have in our WhatsApp session and read all the chat messages. In this way, we are not limited to reading the latest notification, but we have all the context, both in individual and group chats.
Additionally, it is capable of receiving voice and video calls – with the image disabled, of course – although this is an action that some watches already allow.
Some lucky ones who have already been able to install it have complained that some basic features are missing, such as being able to send a message to someone we don’t have in the conversation list, start a call, enlarge received photos and be able to view videos and GIF files. So we have a restricted version of WhatsApp that we are used to using on our cell phones, but it is a very important starting point that, from now on, can only improve.
