Google Wear OS May Get Smartwatch Backup Support When Switching Devices

In an effort to overtake the Apple Watch in the future, Google is investing quite a lot of its resources for the resurrection and adoption of the Wear OS platform. The company is working to make the watch platform and Android smartphones more user-friendly overall. New strings in the Google Play Services beta version 22.32.12 release of the app showed that the company is getting ready to offer support for storing smartwatch data when moving to a new device.

XDA Developers, in their app teardown, found one of the strings titled ‘companion_backup_opt_in_title’ which contained the prompts ‘Back up your device with Google One/ Backup by Google One/ Choose backup account’. For now, users need to factory reset their Wear OS smartwatches in order to transfer them to a new Android smartphone. A device backup option would significantly improve the user experience.

It’s intriguing that Google One, a premium Google membership, is mentioned in the app code. Although a Google One membership is not necessary to access the service, Google’s device data backup settings and administration are located in the Google One app for Android and iOS. According to the report, Google won’t place a function like this behind a paywall since Google One customers pay for more storage on their Google accounts.

It will be interesting to see how Google integrates this backup capability on the Wear OS. The company appears to be testing a number of features prior to Google’s Pixel Watch October release.