Specifically, Google/Samsung destroying one of the major use cases for smartwatches (the other major one being fitness/sportsball tracking) - informative watchfaces. Not dissimilar to what Manifest V3 is doing to browser extensions.
As an avid user of Sectograph - a watchface that shows calendar events graphically as sectors/arcs on a clock, turning the watchface into an at-a-glance schedule preview, I just discovered to my horror that I'm stuck with the smartwatch I have (Galaxy Watch 5 Pro), as current models are all Wear OS 5, and are not allowed to run this watch face, or any nontrivial/useful one.
Sure, this change has been announced over a year ago, but it seems to have passed with very little discussion on-line, including none on HN (that I could find), so I'm bringing this up now.
As an avid user of Sectograph - a watchface that shows calendar events graphically as sectors/arcs on a clock, turning the watchface into an at-a-glance schedule preview, I just discovered to my horror that I'm stuck with the smartwatch I have (Galaxy Watch 5 Pro), as current models are all Wear OS 5, and are not allowed to run this watch face, or any nontrivial/useful one.
Sure, this change has been announced over a year ago, but it seems to have passed with very little discussion on-line, including none on HN (that I could find), so I'm bringing this up now.