The usefulness of a smartwatch can be broken into two domains: the things that it can’t do that your phone can’t; and the things that it can do that your phone can, but that it does even better. In the latter category, convenience is the smartwatch’s primary weapon, saving you a little bit of trouble over a lot of time.
In today’s win for smartwatch convenience, a new Google Play services update, rolling out to smartwatches around the world, brings support for access cards of all kinds. The kind that most people will use is a hotel key. So, yes: now you’ll be able to use your smartwatch to open your doors.
Your Wear OS Smartwatch Will Soon Save You The Trouble Of Reaching For Access Cards
The major reason most people get smartwatches, at least from my viewpoint, is for the health and fitness features that they enable. You can track your heart rate, make sure you’re getting good sleep, check your blood oxygen, and so much more. Those are things that smartphones are simply unable to do. However, smartwatches can do a whole lot more, with the wealth of apps available to them.
Just a few days ago, thanks to a Google Play services update, Google added yet another piece of major functionality to its Wear OS portfolio of devices, bringing support for access cards. For most people, they’ll interact with access cards when they need to enter a hotel room. However, access cards also come in the form of corporate badges that you use to sign into work and campus IDs that give you access to certain parts of your school.
It’s hard to underrate the convenience that this presents. Sure, the difference is between pulling a card out of your wallet or pocket and lifting up your wrist, but the latter certainly prioritizes ease of use, and over weeks, months, and years of having to use these access cards, that convenience will certainly be appreciated.
Wear OS Smartwatches Have Been Able To Store Other Forms Of Passes For Some Time Now
Wear OS as an operating system has always been a proponent for convenience, and this access card update doesn’t come as a shock considering what the OS allows already.
Using your Wear OS smartwatch, you can store boarding passes, concert tickets, and even transit cards for hundreds of cities across the globe. As long as you’ve got all of these passes, tickets, and other cards stored securely on the device sitting on your wrist, you’re good to go. And of course, I don’t need to mention that you can make payments from your wrist too.
Wear OS 5 Is Rolling Out To Select Galaxy Watch Models
Wear OS 5 launched with the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 and Watch Ultra devices earlier this year, before coming relatively soon after on the Pixel Watch 3.
Now, if you have an older Galaxy Watch, you’ll finally be getting your chance at the new OS and the perks that it brings along with it. The Galaxy Watch 6 models have already gotten their chance at the new software, and now, reports say that the Galaxy Watch 5 and the Galaxy Watch FE are currently having their own rollout.
That leaves just the Galaxy Watch 4, which was the very first Samsung smartwatch to ship with Wear OS. Fortunately, it’s confirmed that it’s on the list, and since it is essentially the same as the Watch FE, it shouldn’t need to wait too long.
