It’s fair to say that Google’s Android Wear platform has been a spectacular failure. But they keep trying. And Google’s partners will apparently release over 20 new Android Wear 2.0-based smartwatches by the end of the year.

Color me … skeptical.

“Android Wear was created to take smartwatches beyond ‘one size fits all’,” Google VP David Singleton says. “That’s why we’re thrilled there are even more ways to express your style this fall—all while keeping you informed with messages at a glance, activity tracking, and help from your Google Assistant.”

Singleton rattles off a list of these partners, which includes designer brands like Diesel, Emporio Armani, Fossil, Guess, Gc, Hugo Boss, Michael Kors and Tommy Hilfiger, not to mention Louis Vuitton, Montblanc, TAG Heuer. Movado and ZTE. And there are more pedestrian offerings coming from Huawei, Polar, Ticwatch, and, yes Casio, among others.

So … I don’t know. Android Watch as a platform really does make sense to me. And I’ve always felt that Android Wear offered better and more discoverable navigation than Apple Watch. But the devices themselves, and I’ve owned several, are uniformly terrible, with bad battery life and usually bulky designs.

Will this change with Android Wear 2.0? I doubt it. But I’ll keep watching.

Tagged with Android Wear, Apple Watch, wearables