At some point, someone decided that smartwatches have to be capable of replacing your phone. While that might work okay-ish on Apple's platform, it's a disaster over in the Android world – underpowered but battery-sucking Snapdragon chips meet poorly written software on Wear OS. With Pebble gone, there aren't many options left for people looking for a simple wearable that just shows them notifications. Reddit user u/smarchbme took matters into his hands (literally) and created his own smartwatch with a custom OS, custom design, and a battery life of one whole week that simply mirrors his iPhone's notifications, with no bells and whistles, all while open sourcing the entire project. Sometimes, less is more.

Australians are the first to be affected

ffs Apple again?

Wear OS is in a much better place that it was six months ago. In the new 2.1 update, Google changed the main watch face and everything is simpler and easier to use. Pair that with news of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 3100 processor and smartwatches for Android users start looking a lot less grim. In this week’s Processor, Dieter revisits what's next for Wear OS smartwatches.