Google Assistant at the Galaxy Watch 4 is excellent except for one thing

When Google and Samsung introduced Wear OS 3 closing year, I had lots of questions on how well Google offerings would run on Samsung hardware. Of Google’s expansive suite of apps, I was most curious about Google Assistant. The only catch was it wasn’t to be had when the Galaxy Watch 4 lineup launched — and there were only vague promises as to when it would really be to be had. But yesterday, Google Assistant finally arrived on the Galaxy Watch 4, and after a few hours of playing around with it, I’m carefully optimistic.

Google Assistant was already a function on older Wear OS 2 watches. It just wasn’t great. Because Wear OS 2 watches struggled with underpowered hardware, Google Assistant was often laggy and never absolutely lived up to its potential. Asking for more than the most primary queries was a crapshoot. Meanwhile, Samsung’s Tizen watches had snappy overall performance but only provided up Bixby. And Bixby... is Bixby. Despite Samsung’s efforts, it’s just not as beneficial as other digital assistants. All this to say: once the Google Assistant was to be had for the Galaxy Watch 4, I installed it as fast as humanly possible.

INSTALLING GOOGLE ASSISTANT

Setting up Google Assistant on the Galaxy Watch 4 isn’t hard. The only factor you have to do is ensure your phone and watch are running the modern software. Once that’s done, launch the Google Play Store app on your wrist. You can then either seek for “Google Assistant” or scroll down to My Apps. Either way, you should see a button that reads “Assistant Update.” After that, follow the activates to activate Google Assistant on your phone.

It’s at this factor that you can either opt in or out of Voice Match, which allows Assistant to create a customised voice version on your device. You’ll also see a message alerting you that if you elect to have the watch listen for the “Hey Google” wake phrase, it’ll effect battery life. (More on this in a bit.)