Cần những ý tưởng mới để cạnh tranh với Apple Watch trong lĩnh vực đồng hồ thông minh Android.

Apple’s fall 2023 hardware event has come and gone, with the iPhone 15 series, Apple Watch UItra 2, and Apple Watch Series 9 taking center stage. This year’s phones didn’t receive any major design changes, though Android fans should pay attention to five key areas that did see upgrades. But rather than focusing on the phones, it’s worth looking at the new Apple Watch Series 9 lineup. If you missed this year’s keynote and haven’t seen what the company’s new watches look like, well, just take a look at last year’s Apple Watch 8, or the Watch Series 7, or the Watch 6 Series before that. You’ll get the idea.

Okay, it may not be entirely fair to say that Apple hasn’t changed the design of its smartwatches. But unless you’re glued to the industry and have a keen eye for small details, chances are you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between versions out in the wild. So, why doesn’t Apple change up the core design that it’s been using basically since the wearable first debuted in 2015? Simple: It doesn’t have to. In eight years, no other smartwatch brand has managed to make a significant dent in Apple’s market share, despite only working with one type of device. If there is any hope for that to change in the future, it’s going to take real innovation on behalf of both Samsung and Google.

Hope is there, but it will take courage to do it

It’s said that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” If that’s true, every designer at Apple should feel very flattered. While its first smartwatch wasn’t a flawless success, every model after that has been, admittedly, pretty fantastic. For nearly a decade now, every wearable maker has been chasing Apple and doing everything possible to gain traction in the market. This isn’t to say that there are a lot of excellent smartwatches for Android users, but none of them have the popularity, feature integrations, or health industry clout that Apple does.

Samsung would be the closest to Apple in these categories, but it does have all the boxes checked at the same time as Apple does. The latest Galaxy Watch 6 and Watch 6 Classic are both fantastic watches, but neither will do enough to move the needle in user adoption the way Apple does. Looking at how different wearable brands have been trending in the global markets with info from Counterpoint Research, it’s clear that Apple will continue to dominate the space for the foreseeable future.

I have an Apple Watch Series 7, and it’s a fine wearable on its own. I really like how fluid and snappy the entire experience feels when using it. But no matter how much I try to use iOS, I don’t like it, leaving the Apple Watch lineup a total non-starter. So, I continue trying out various smartwatches for Android. I recently reviewed both the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 Classic and Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 for XDA, and they are both fantastic. I’ve used the Google Pixel Watch, a beautiful piece of hardware, and many Amazfit watches like the GTS 4. For me, these are all great smartwatches. But again, none are truly taking a bite out of the Apple market share.

So, is there any hope? Yes, I believe there is. But it is going to require OS developers taking a page from Apple’s playbook by trying to “Think different.” It’s obvious that trying to mimic everything that the Apple Watch does won’t work. Sure, there are features that should be across all wearables, but it seems that all watches not made by Apple are simply chasing that company’s success rather than trying a different path. Google has worked on non-contact gestures for years with Project Soli, showing off actions similar to the new double-tap gesture on the Series 9 years before Apple. But it never really came to fruition in a product you could actually buy.

In the past, neither Samsung nor Google were afraid to take chances to try something new. But it appears those days are behind them as the companies grew up, and it’s a shame.

With the launch of Wear OS 4 on the latest Samsung smartwatches, I had hopes that the new operating system would bring something that is actually new. Instead, it is very minor changes, at least on the current watches running the software. This could change when Google fully unveils the Pixel Watch 2 in October, but based on the leaks we’ve seen so far, I highly doubt it. Samsung and Google teamed up to relaunch the wearable platform with Wear OS 3, and like many fans of Android wearables, I was very excited about what was to come. However, all it has seemed to accomplish is bringing Samsung into the Wear OS fold, while Google itself launched a smartphone of its own.

Both of those companies used to take chances. Sure, not everything panned out — for every Chromecast or Galaxy Z Fold, there’s a Google Glass, a Bixby, a Nexus Q, and so on — but most of those failures all generated new ideas that eventually found their ways into successful products. That’s what needs to happen in the wearable space. Each of these companies that are trying to make smartwatches for Android needs to find something to set the products apart, aside from being the round wearable to Apple’s boring old rectangle. Basically, Android users need something to convince them wearables are something more than a take on what Apple is already doing.

Stop trying to match the Apple Watch at its own game

Ask most wearable reviewers what they think of the Apple Watch, and they’ll likely respond the same: at its core, it’s a fantastic device, with the (massive) caveat of requiring an iPhone. That said, most modern Android smartwatches are similarly excellent, functioning (with some exceptions) across ecosystems. In order for there to be true excitement for wearables not meant for the iPhone, it is going to take something really innovative to impress consumers.

The new double-tap gesture with the Apple Watch Series 9 is a perfect example, taking some of the more involved gestures from previous wearables and condensing it down to something that requires the smallest of movements to activate. Whether its health-focused features like the long-delayed blood pressure monitoring previously offered on older Samsung hardware, or a hardware-transforming tool similar to the leap in smartphone design brought with foldables, this is the kind of revolution that needs to happen on our side of the fence to truly separate non-Apple Watch devices.

Samsung and Google remain the big players in the Android smartwatch space due to their co-development of Wear OS. This is where we need other, smaller brands like Mobvoi to bring hardware-defining features to its wearables, too. As any recent Galaxy Watch owner can tell you, OEM customization is just one of the big benefits that arrived with Wear OS 3, allowing Android wearables to feel more unique than ever. Mobvoi already stands out among the competition with its Pro line of watches, thanks to the dual-display tech that both improves outdoor viewing and aids in the longest battery life of any Wear OS watch. But obviously, that isn’t enough anymore.

So, who has the courage to try something truly revolutionary to steal some of the magic from Apple? I don’t know, but I hope to see it soon.

• Google Pixel Watch

  $309 $350 Save $41

  We’ve waited for Google to make a watch for over a decade, and the Google Pixel Watch has finally arrived. The first Android smartwatch with Fitbit health tracking, the Pixel Watch aims to help you stay fit or get fit easily. Plus, Wear OS 3.5 brings us Google’s vision for a wearable UI and exclusive Wear OS apps for Google services, like Google Home.

• Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 Classic

  Samsung’s latest generation of the Galaxy Watch 6 comes in a larger Classic version. It sports a bigger case and a physical rotating bezel to control the watch, alongside all the other welcome improvements in the vanilla Watch 6.