Google

It's been a while since I have come across an Android smartwatch that checks all the boxes for a Wear OS-powered device. Time and again, Google and major Android manufacturers have tried, but have always come up short in one area or another. At times, it's the battery life; at others, it's just a poorly designed or overly complicated UI. With Google's Pixel Watch, performance has also been a problem. Consistency is another area which has always been my pain point with Wear OS devices from big names like Samsung or OnePlus. The UI is never consistent, as Google apps always look different from Samsung's One UI skinning. Given how power-hungry WearOS is, most smartwatch brands have lately also steered clear of it, designing and building their own chips and operating systems that help deliver better battery life. And so, in India, customers can only pick between Google and Samsung when buying a Wear OS-powered smartwatch.

In the hardware space, Google is a brand that loves to load its devices with the coolest software features to create an impressive experience. Most Pixel users are already familiar with this. However, the company is also known to struggle when it comes to pairing up the software experience with hardware shrewdness. We have recently seen this with the Pixel 10 smartphones and then with the Pixel 10 Pro Fold. These are the devices that promise a lot and almost win you over, but something always holds them back.

It has been a while since foldables took centre stage as the most premium devices in any smartphone brand's lineup of products. Apple has yet to showcase its first foldable (which it has been working on for a while), a move that is expected to give a boost to this smartphone segment that seems stuck in the doldrums when it comes to consumer adoption. At the same time, there is a new breed of foldable by Huawei that was launched in China last year, but went global this year. The “tri-folds” as they are currently referred to, are indeed what everyone dreamt foldables would be. A smartphone-sized device that, like something out of Westworld, would open up into a full-sized rectangular tablet serving two use cases.