Android Wear Google Assistant bug leaves owners powerless
Smartwatches are odd contraptions. They promise to empower users by detaching their faces from their phone screens while still giving them much of their phone's features. At the same time, they also make users more enslaved to notifications and also deprive them of effective ways to interact with the device other than a few taps or by voice. The latter, however, is no longer true if you're using an Android Wear smartwatch, as users now find Google Assistant, which should let them control the wearable via voice, ignoring them and redirecting them to a Google search instead.
If things were actually working well, Android Wear would give users a taste of science fiction made science, allowing them to control their smartwatch or their phone, get information from their Android apps, and the like, without even having to make a single tap. That is, if things are working well, which apparently isn't the case anymore thanks to an update that Google itself pushed.
Google Assistant, which has replaced Google Now on the latest Android Wear, simply redirects users to a web search, its default behavior when it doesn't understand your command or has no actions associated with it. It's almost as if it has completely forgotten everything it knew. Users have observed that this started happening after an update to the Google Search app where Assistant is located. Indeed, users who have reset their Android Wear smartwatches got Assistant back working again until the Google app was updated again.
The good news: Google is aware of the situation and has responded on the Product Forums. The bad news: it is still investigating the issue and no fix has been sighted yet. It has actually been a week since the critical bug has been reported, which has left many Android Wear owners less than satisfied.
And that's not the only problem such users have to contend with. Two months ago, Android Wear owners have complained that recurring reminders have been erroneously marked as done automatically, even if users haven't even touched the reminders yet. Google was supposedly working on a fix but hit a snag that prevented them from actually fixing it. So Android Wear users are now left with a smartwatch that doesn't understand what they want it to do or is a little too eager to complete tasks for their owners.