arrived on the Galaxy Watch 4<\/a>, and after a few hours of playing around with it, I\u2019m cautiously optimistic.<\/p>\nGoogle Assistant was already a feature on older Wear OS 2 watches. It just wasn\u2019t great. Because Wear OS 2 watches struggled with underpowered hardware, Google Assistant was often laggy and never fully lived up to its potential. Asking for more than the most basic queries was a crapshoot. Meanwhile, Samsung\u2019s Tizen watches had snappy performance but only offered up Bixby. And Bixby… is Bixby. Despite Samsung\u2019s efforts, it\u2019s just not as useful as other digital assistants. All this to say: once the Google Assistant was available for the Galaxy Watch 4, I installed it as fast as humanly possible.<\/p>\n\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/source><\/picture>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n
It\u2019ll show up as an update in the on-wrist Google Play Store.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\nInstalling Google Assistant<\/h2>\n Setting up Google Assistant on the Galaxy Watch 4 isn\u2019t hard. The only thing you have to do is make sure your phone and watch are running the latest software. Once that\u2019s done, launch the Google Play Store app on your wrist. You can then either search for \u201cGoogle Assistant\u201d or scroll down to My Apps. Either way, you should see a button that reads \u201cAssistant Update.\u201d After that, follow the prompts to activate Google Assistant on your phone. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s at this point that you can either opt in or out of Voice Match, which allows Assistant to create a personalized voice model on your device. You\u2019ll also see a message alerting you that if you elect to have the watch listen for the \u201cHey Google\u201d wake phrase, it\u2019ll impact battery life. (More on this in a bit.) <\/p>\n
\n
\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/source><\/picture>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n
I told Bixby to take a hike by reprogramming my shortcuts.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nYou can also take the extra step of reprogramming the watch\u2019s home key (the one with the red trim in the upper right) to launch Google Assistant instead of Bixby. To do that:<\/p>\n
\nOpen the Galaxy Wearable<\/strong> app.<\/li>\nSelect Watch settings<\/strong>.<\/li>\nTap Advanced features<\/strong>.<\/li>\nUnder the Home Key menu, you can either program Assistant to launch via a double press<\/strong> or press and hold<\/strong>. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\nAfter that, you can take a page from Marie Kondo\u2019s book, thank Bixby for its service, and wish it well in its future endeavors. (You can\u2019t, however, fully uninstall Bixby. I tried.)<\/p>\n
Good performance, terrible battery<\/h2>\n Broadly speaking, Google Assistant on the Galaxy Watch 4 is the best it’s ever been on a Wear OS watch. However, that\u2019s a low bar, and it\u2019s not all rainbows and butterflies.<\/p>\n
The main thing is that Google Assistant is much faster on the Galaxy Watch 4. That\u2019s not surprising given this watch has a more powerful processor than every other Wear OS watch you can currently buy. The Assistant understood my commands, whether it was to message my husband, set a timer, or tell me whether it was going to rain today. I also didn\u2019t have to wait with bated breath for Google Assistant to process things. Even if it botched a command \u2014 which all digital assistants occasionally do \u2014 it did so quickly. That said, the watch does have to be awake for any voice command to register. <\/p>\n
\n
It\u2019d be almost perfect if it weren\u2019t for the fact that enabling Google Assistant is a major battery drain<\/q><\/aside>\n<\/div>\nBetween Assistant on the Galaxy Watch 4 and Siri on my Apple Watch Series 7, I\u2019d say the performance is quite similar. Both are quick to wake, understand the majority of my mumbling, and take about the same amount of time to answer queries. However, Assistant has a slight edge when it comes to delivering useful search results. For example, I asked both Assistant and Siri to find me the closest auto repair shop. While Google Assistant was able to recommend nearby shops that were highly rated and easy to get to, Siri found me one repair shop with no ratings and several parking garages. <\/p>\n
It\u2019d almost be perfect if it weren\u2019t for the fact that enabling Google Assistant has been a major battery drain in the short time I\u2019ve been using it. While testing the feature, I had the always-on display enabled and the watch listening for the \u201cHey Google\u201d trigger in the background. After about two hours, it went from fully charged to 80 percent. At this rate, I\u2019ll be lucky to make it to bedtime. With the same settings enabled on the Series 7, for the same period of time and use, I\u2019m only down to 92 percent. I can\u2019t say it\u2019s a shock, but it\u2019s disappointing nonetheless.<\/p>\n
\n
Google Assistant makes more sense for all but the most diehard Bixby fans<\/q><\/aside>\n<\/div>\nWhile it took a while for Google Assistant to arrive, now that it has, the majority of Google\u2019s services are available as apps on the Galaxy Watch 4. In addition to Assistant, apps like Gboard, Google Pay, Google Maps, and YouTube Music can all be downloaded directly from the Play Store. Meanwhile, Google Home and Google Wallet are set to arrive later this year. Calendar is still missing from the bunch, but by and large, Android users don\u2019t have<\/em> to stick with Samsung\u2019s preinstalled apps if they don\u2019t want to anymore.<\/p>\nUltimately, with Google Assistant, I can actually see myself using a digital assistant on a Samsung smartwatch. That\u2019s a first. It was also a much more enjoyable experience than Assistant on Wear OS 2. So while I can see users opting to stay on Samsung Pay or choosing Spotify over YouTube Music, Google Assistant makes more sense for all but the most diehard Bixby fans. It\u2019s hard to say how much of this experience will apply to the forthcoming Pixel Watch \u2014 though I\u2019m optimistic that the good performance here will translate. I\u2019m also hopeful that Samsung might figure out how to make its next-gen smartwatches more power-efficient. But in the meantime, I wish Galaxy Watch 4 owners didn\u2019t have to accept worse battery life in exchange for a good digital assistant.<\/p>\n
Photography by Victoria Song \/ The Verge<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nSource: https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/23139420\/google-assistant-samsung-galaxy-watch-4-wear-os-3-hands-on-demo<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Source: When Google and Samsung announced Wear OS 3 last year, I had lots of questions about how well Google services would run on Samsung hardware. Of Google\u2019s expansive suite of apps, I was most curious about Google Assistant. The only catch was it wasn\u2019t available when the Galaxy Watch 4 lineup launched \u2014 and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,8],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-6575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-google","category-technology","tag-google"],"yoast_head":"\n
Google Assistant on the Galaxy Watch 4 is great except for one thing - Science and Nerds<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2022\/05\/25\/google-assistant-on-the-galaxy-watch-4-is-great-except-for-one-thing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Google Assistant on the Galaxy Watch 4 is great except for one thing - Science and Nerds\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Source: When Google and Samsung announced Wear OS 3 last year, I had lots of questions about how well Google services would run on Samsung hardware. Of Google\u2019s expansive suite of apps, I was most curious about Google Assistant. 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