I hope Google steals this Galaxy Watch 8 feature for the Pixel Watch 4

The Pixel Watch 4 is expected to arrive on August 20, and it’s shaping up quite nicely. We’ve seen leaks teasing a bigger battery, brighter display, and faster charging (with a funky new charging mechanism, too). Paired with Google’s new Material 3 Expressive interface, there’s a lot to look forward to.

While I’m excited to see Google’s latest smartwatch innovations, I can’t help but keep thinking about one of Samsung’s. I just finished reviewing the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic, and it has a software feature that’s so good, I can’t help but hope that Google blatantly copies it for the Pixel Watch 4.

Tiles have been a part of Wear OS since 2019, and in the six years they’ve existed, they haven’t changed much at all. You view your tiles by swiping left or right on your clock face, with each tile taking up its own new page. For example, you may have a weather tile on one page, a Google Maps tile on another, a Spotify tile on the next page, and so on.

In theory, tiles are great. If you want to check an upcoming calendar appointment, start a new Google Keep note, or see a preview of your Gmail inbox, you can do all of it just by scrolling through your home screens without ever having to open a new app. But therein lies the problem with Wear OS tiles: scrolling.

Because you only get one tile per page, that means if you want to use a lot of tiles, you end up with a lot of extra pages to scroll through to see everything. It creates a delicate balancing act of deciding which tiles to have first in line and which ones to put at the end, removing tiles you want but don’t necessarily need, etc. I love the concept of tiles, but the endless micromanaging that ends up coming with them deters me from using tiles as much as I’d like.

But that’s completely changed with the Galaxy Watch 8 series.

The Galaxy Watch 8 and Watch 8 Classic are the first two smartwatches to ship with One UI 8 Watch — Samsung’s custom version of Wear OS 6. It’s loaded with new features and settings, but the most important is how it rethinks tiles.

After years of being restricted to one tile per page, One UI 8 Watch does the unthinkable and allows you to have two, three, four, and even more tiles all on a single page. Samsung replaced the old full-screen tile design with two new tile sizes (small and large), enabling you to scroll vertically through as many tiles as you decide to add on each page.

This already sounded impressive before I got my hands on the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic, and now that I’ve experienced this reimagined tile life, I’m not sure I can go back to the old way. It’s taken me some time to find a setup that I really like, but I think I’ve created a pretty great system.

My first tile page is my “Activity” one. It’s got a tile for my daily activity goals, heart rate, Samsung’s new Running Coach, and my vascular load. Next is my “Life” page. Here, I have a calendar tile that displays my next event, a big weather tile, and two smaller ones for my alarm and some calculator shortcuts. Finally, my “Health” page has all sorts of other health-related tiles — including ones for my energy score, sleep tracking, blood oxygen, stress, and the ECG app.

There are so many upsides to this new version of Wear OS tiles, the first being information density. Now, instead of just seeing one tile per page, I can see two tiles on each of the pages I’ve set up at any given time.

That alone would normally require six pages to see those first two tiles, but in One UI 8 Watch, it’s reduced to three. And once you account for all of the tiles I’ve added, you’re looking at 13 tiles on those three pages — something that would require 13 pages on any other version of Wear OS.

Although you still need to scroll vertically through each page to view your complete list of widgets, the ability to organize them across a handful of pages like this is a significant help. Now, instead of scrolling through one long list of all my widgets, there’s finally a sense of organization. I know all my activity widgets are on my Activity page, my miscellaneous day-to-day ones are on the Life page, etc.

The more I use the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic, the more I find myself hoping that Google will copy this new take on tiles and add it to the Pixel Watch 4. We know Google is planning a significant UI overhaul with Material 3 Expressive, but nothing we’ve seen so far suggests Google is moving away from the traditional full-screen tiles. At least, nothing concrete.

Google recently updated its Fitbit Wear OS app with a big Material 3 Expressive makeover, and part of that update includes redesigned tiles. They’re still full-screen ones, but many of them have the same smaller oval shape we see with Samsung’s One UI 8 Watch tiles. I might be reading into it too much, but I like to think it’s a sign of Google setting the stage for its own support of multiple tiles per page.

Even if that’s not what’s happening right now, I’m going to hold out hope that Google will eventually (and hopefully soon) realize that Samsung has the right idea. These updated tiles are one of my favorite things about the Galaxy Watch 8, and it’s something I know I’ll desperately miss when I get my hands on the Pixel Watch 4.

They say that great artists steal, and if there’s ever been a time for Google to steal from Samsung, this is it.