If we're being completely honest, it's not been the best of years for Android Wear, despite the long-awaited arrival of Android Wear 2.0 - a delayed roll-out and a lack of flagship smartwatch launches means Google's wrist-based OS is lagging behind the Apple Watch.
Now there's another problem for Android Wear users to deal with: a broken Google Assistant. Considering one of the main benefits of wearing a computer on your arm is to quickly speak out instructions, that's a pretty major problem.
The bug has been confirmed on a post in the Google Product Forums and reported by Android Police, and it seems a recent update to the OS means Google Assistant can no longer set timers, send texts, control smart home devices and a bunch of other stuff that makes it the useful assistant app it is.
Problems piling up
"We identified some issues in Google Assistant for Android Wear that we are working to fix," explained a Google community manager over the weekend. "We will be gathering bug reports from an email that you will receive, let us know." In other words, report the bugs to Google and sit tight.
It's not the only issue Android Wear users are having to put up with either. A bug that completes recurring reminders automatically without any user input has been dragging on for months, and Google just admitted that a patch intended to fix the issue hasn't actually fixed the issue.
All of which is a shame as we actually quite like Android Wear 2.0, with its rejigged interface, new input options, and so on. Let's hope Google gets around to squashing these bugs sooner rather than later to give Android Wear owners properly functioning smartwatches.
