Naturally, long-suffering fans have been given a spark of hope that the Google-Samsung collaboration might finally make Wear OS a worthy competitor to Apple’s watchOS.

One of the few notable updates to Wear OS in recent years came all the way back in 2019 when it added ‘Tiles’.

The only problem? They’ve been restricted to Google’s own apps.

At the beginning of this year, Google released the Jetpack Tiles library in Alpha form as part of a pledge to open up the feature to third-party developers. Since then, Mountain View says that it “included many of the [suggested] requests and performance improvements into the APIs.” Google is now making good on its promise and developers can upload their Wear OS tiles via the Play Console. A couple of developers have already started building their own Tiles:

Using the new Tiles API, we were able to easily expose our Wear app features to be just a swipe away from your watch face.” – Samo Kralj, Android Staff Software Engineer at Calm.

“The API was easy to understand and the documentation was quite clear, enabling us to have our first tile running with real data within hours. It feels like a very modern API that is easy to get started with.” – Viktor Åkerskog, Technical Lead at Sleep Cycle.

It may have taken over two years, but at least WearOS developers can finally start releasing their own Tiles.

The new version of Wear OS, which Google refers to as Wear OS 3 but had introduced it as Wear before, will eventually arrive on the Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 3 and its 4G/LTE connected counterpart, and the TicWatch E3, plus unannounced models from Fossil and Mobvoi expected later in 2021. It won’t be arriving very quickly either; as Google states that it “expects our partners to be able to roll out the system update starting in mid to second half of 2022.”

When the update does arrive it’s so comprehensive that the smartwatch will be reset to factory settings during the process, Google states it will make the update an option. If you don’t want to reset your watch, then you don’t have to update to Wear OS 3. Google quietly announced the details regarding the new software on its Wear OS community help page.

The news doesn’t quite fit with the statement released by Qualcomm concerning which smartwatches could receive an update. It said Wear OS 3 is supported by smartwatches with the Snapdragon Wear 3100 and Snapdragon 4100 processors, but Google’s list only features the two Snapdragon 4100 models available now, with no mention of the dozens of current Snapdragon Wear 3100 models.

If you own a Ticwatch Pro 3 or Ticwatch E3, it will be at least a year old by the time the software arrives. Samsung is expected to launch the Galaxy Watch 4 at its August 11 Unpacked event, and it will use the new Wear platform with Samsung’s One UI over the top, making a 12-month wait at the minimum for an update to arrive on a watch you can already buy a disappointment.

While confirmation of an update is good news, the small selection of compatible models and the long wait before it arrives is not. If you’re considering buying a new Android smartwatch, it may be worth waiting to buy a model with the latest software on board already.