Polar watches are usually excellent operating and triathlon units, however they’re very stripped-back on the subject of appears and performance.

With glorious operating metrics and GPS credentials, they’ll go toe-to-toe with Garmin and Apple in our greatest operating watch tier listing, however their lack of performance exterior of train stops them from being critical rivals to units from Apple and Samsung, and the Google Pixel Watch, within the life-style house. They don’t run third-party apps, or provide a lot linked performance exterior of primary notifications. 

All that could possibly be about to alter, although, with Polar hinting that its subsequent watch might run Google’s WearOS working system. This data comes from Polar’s CEO Sander Werring (opens in new tab), in an interview with Wareable. 

“Yeah, it is an choice,” Werring mentioned through the interview. “That is actually a state of expertise type of a query. And we do see this expertise now showing.”

Polar’s final watch on Android’s platform, the Polar M600, was launched in 2016 when the working system was nonetheless referred to as Android Put on, and Werring went on to say the M600 was forward of its time. 

“We needed to do an excessive amount of heavy lifting in these days as a result of there was no reference in any way for this kind of expertise on Put on OS… typically that is the case with improvements; typically you might be too early.”

Polar has already begun licensing its suite of health metrics to companions, such because the Casio G-Shock introduced final week, and Werring hints that could possibly be the way in which ahead to entry different applied sciences Polar doesn’t present in the mean time, equivalent to electrocardiogram scans, higher referred to as ECG.

Lots of the different greatest smartwatches, together with Apple Watches, provide ECG scans, however Polar has by no means gone in for it. Having its watches within the WearOS ecosystem would enable different builders to deal with the ECG performance, whereas Polar focuses on what it is good at. 

In our Google Pixel Watch assessment, we mentioned Fitbit integration with Google could possibly be tighter. I like Fitbit’s ecosystem from a common design perspective, however in case you’re an everyday runner, Polar’s superior number of operating metrics is healthier. 

You get on-wrist operating energy to measure the hassle you exert on a run (which Fitbit doesn’t do); GPS options equivalent to Monitor Again, which brings you again to the beginning of a route (which Fitbit additionally doesn’t do); plus stride size, cadence, and all method of different subtle metrics, all specified by an simply accessible approach, and which customers do not want a further premium subscription to entry.

If Polar might roll its glorious health options into a very linked WearOS smartwatch, it might be a drive to be reckoned with. And Google would don’t have anything to fret about, as all this might nonetheless be primarily based on Google’s personal WearOS platform; certainly, it’s an indication that WearOS is maturing as supposed.

The truth that different firms need to piggyback on the success of WearOS might, although, be a blow to Apple, because the emergence of recent and improved linked units on WearOS 3.5 would see the smartwatch house flooded with high-quality Google-based merchandise, creating extra decisions than ever – and fewer causes for Android customers to modify to Apple.