There’s good news and there’s very good news — the kind that arrives when all hope is lost. The latter is what Google fans are getting this Wednesday because the Mountain View giant just added the overdue support for Uber on the Android Wear smartwatch OS.
According to Android Police, Uber is now available on Google’s Android Wear OS. This is music to the ears of fans who waited for the ride-hailing service to come to the smartwatch OS. It can be noted that Google promised to bring Uber to Android Wear during its I/O 2015 event 21 months ago. The almost two years waiting period may have irked some Android fans. To appease them, Google did not wait for its I/O 2017 event — scheduled to happen from May 17 through 19 — just to break the very good news.
The Uber app for Google’s smartwatch OS is a standalone app. This means it can work on its own without the need of a tethered smartphone. Since this isn’t a companion app, users can request rides directly from the smartwatch because all pertinent features and data are found on the Android Wear app. Users can check prices and ETAs and even bookmark destinations without having to use a phone. Even the car model and the plate number of the Uber ride are displayed on the Uber app’s interface.
Unfortunately, the arrival of Uber onto the smartwatch operating system cannot be considered as good news by many Android consumers as of late. Apparently, Google decided that the ride-hailing service should only be exclusive to Android Wear 2.0, as per Phone Arena. This means all timepieces running Android Wear will not have support for the Uber app. For those that will be updated to Android Wear 2.0 in the future, they will eventually get the chance to support the app. For users with devices stuck with Android Wear, this is already a sign that they need to upgrade.
Android Wear 2.0 smartwatch users can now download the Uber app directly from the Play Store on their device. This gives Uber an advantage over its competitor, Lyft. The latter’s Android Wear app was removed from the Play Store way before Android Wear 2.0 was launched. It isn’t clear if the app will be revived anytime soon, but it’s possible that Lyft could also be working on a standalone app for the new Google smartwatch OS.
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