Like the look of the Apple Watch but don’t have an iPhone? Well we have bad news for you: Apple’s popular smartwatch won’t work with anything else, meaning if you’ve got an Android phone stashed in your pocket you’re out of luck.
There are, however, smartwatches that aren’t Apple-dependent, and that work brilliantly with Android phones.
Some of them even have a Google-made operating system, just like Android itself. WearOS, formerly known as Android Wear, is Android underneath, but it’s wrapped in an interface that makes it more suitable for tiny round screens.
One problem with watches that try to pack in a lot of functionality is that the batteries are necessarily small, meaning you’ll end up charging them every day or two or risk running out of juice in the middle of a workout or when trying to read notifications.
You can get smartwatches with barely any OS at all, just a bundle of sensors that sit on your wrist telling the time, monitoring your activity, and discreetly buzzing when you have a notification. They mostly communicate via a phone app, but some have touchscreen displays. Then there are those that have evolved from fitness trackers, which take a greater interest in how much you move, and can monitor things like laps of the track or lengths of the pool.
Knowing what you want from a smartwatch is key before you jump in. If you want what’s essentially a second phone on your wrist, then that’s possible, but many people would rather have something classic and analogue, which opens up the many hybrid watches on the market.
Sports fans need to decide what they like to do and how they want to be tracked, while everyone else needs to work out if their notifications are so important that they need another device to alert them to emails.
Here are some of the best smartwatches for use with Android phones.
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Samsung Galaxy Watch 4
From the maker of some of the finest Android smartphones comes the best WearOS smartwatch - though beware of some compatibility issues if you try to use it with a non-Samsung phone.
The super-AMOLED screen is bright and contrasty, the dual-core processor means you get snappy performance, and a 4G-enabled version is also available.
The watch will monitor your heart rate (and more with its ECG function), give you an idea of your body fat and water percentages, track your location so it can measure the distance you’ve run, and even give you an idea of your blood pressure. As with all smartwatches, though, it’s hard to get a handle on how accurate these readings are without comparing them to the same tests carried out at a doctor’s office or hospital. It’s IP68 rating means it will keep out dust and dirt, and can be submerged in 1.5m of water for 30 minutes. That’s not quite the same as taking it swimming.
The Galaxy Watch 5 and 5 Pro have just been announced at Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event, but you can’t actually buy one yet, making the Watch 4 the current top of the line. Differences between the 4 and 5 models appear to be minimal, with the newer release claiming a longer battery life between charges (the Watch 4 needs charging every day), and with better fitness tracking on the Pro model.
Buy now £249.00, Amazon
Garmin Venu 2
Garmin’s smartwatches are closely related to the firm’s range of fitness and running watches, and run the company’s own OS, distinct from Android and WearOS. This means they’re not bothered about the phone you pair them with, and will happily work with all Android phones and iPhones.
The Venu 2 is a great choice for runners and general fitness tracking. If you want detail about your exercise regime, rather than just the top-line numbers about how far you went in how much time, then this is the place to come. The five-day battery life will please many who don’t like the idea of charging their watch every night, and you get touchscreen controls.
It’s a tough, hard-wearing watch, with a case made from stainless steel plus a covering of Gorilla Glass over the AMOLED screen, and is waterproof to a depth of 50m, which means it should be fine in your local pool. The heart rate sensor is a new one, called Elevate v4, which has additional LEDs on the back of the watch for more sensitive beat-detection.
Buy now £349.00, Amazon
Fossil Hybrid Collider
The Collider is a smartwatch that doesn’t look like it does anything other than tell the time. However, hiding behind the analogue hands is an e-ink screen that’s always on, showing you things like your heart rate and the local weather along with the time and date.
Pair it with your smartphone, and its app allows you to customise a lot about its look, and you can have it vibrate when you get a notification from apps you decide on from a list. It acts as a music remote control, will help find your phone if you lose it (Bluetooth range allowing) and measures your heart rate and sleep as well as how many steps you’ve taken and how many calories you’ve burned.
As e-ink screens only use power when they change, and the watch can get away with syncing over Bluetooth only a few times a day (apart from push notifications), the battery life is very good, with the watch going two weeks between charges.
Buy now £189.00, Watch Shop
Ticwatch Pro 3 Ultra 4G
Getting separate 4G connectivity in a WearOS smartwatch is relatively rare, and this model is compatible with services such as Vodafone OneNumber to share your main phone’s minutes and data allocations.
The screen is AMOLED protected by Gorilla Glass, and the overall look is rugged - at 12mm thick it’s surprisingly chunky for something you wear on your wrist - with an always-on display for telling the time and touch sensitivity for manipulating WearOS’s tiles.
The watch is IP68 waterproof to 1.5m for 30 minutes, making it useful for swimming if not diving, and has fitness tracking features including some unusual sports choices such as fencing and ice hockey. There are heart rate and blood oxygen sensors, and the battery lasts about three days on a charge.
Buy now £329.99, Amazon
Montblanc Summit Lite
A premium WearOS watch with fitness tracking features, the premium materials and build quality of the watch itself are slightly offset by a baffling rubber strap. It comes with the all-black version of the watch and is at least comfortable, and also replaceable, while fabric versions are fitted on other colours.
The AMOLED touchscreen gets a protective covering of Gorilla Glass, while three physical buttons, including a rotating crown, run up the right-hand side. You can have up to five WearOS tiles displayed at a time, and there are Summit Lite custom faces available.
The watch tracks your movement and heart rate, and can provide a summary of your fitness, advice on recovery after exercise, and provide estimations of your training load and lung capacity. There's sleep tracking too, in collaboration with the Google Fit app, though just as many may be attracted to this watch for its name rather than its features.
Buy now £715.00, Jura Watches
Casio G-Shock GBD-H1000
So chunky we’re amazed it has the audacity to have so many fitness sensors, this is a largely successful attempt to blend the fashion-forward looks of the G-Shock range with something that will appeal to runners.
A remarkable feature of the watch is its tiny solar panel which, as long as you don’t use its battery-draining features constantly, will keep it topped up as long as you remember to expose it to sunlight.
There's no sleep tracking (it’s a bit large for wearing in bed anyway) but it will detect your heart rate, and measure things like calories burned in an exercise session as well as distance travelled. It suggests intervals between training sessions to maximise recovery, and the souped up aesthetic means it’s well protected against the elements, with a waterproof rating down to 150m.
Anyone buying the G-Shock because it looks good should know that it’s tightly aimed at runners, so those looking for broader smartwatch features may be disappointed.
Buy now £339.00, Amazon
Konaby Sekel
Another hybrid like the Fossil Collider, and this time the smart capabilities are even more cunningly hidden. With its silver casing, sapphire crystal covering and blue face, it could be a Swiss watch from any number of manufacturers.
Underneath, however, there's a Bluetooth LE connection to your smartphone, allowing the watch to act as a remote control for things like your music player app and phone camera. It discreetly vibrates when you get a notification, or when an alarm is sounding, will count your steps, and has built-in GPS that can be utilised in tandem with IFTTT (If This Then That, a way of making simple chains of events between, say, the watch’s position and your smart lighting).
The battery is replaceable rather than rechargeable, and lasts up to two years. The watch is also waterproof to 100m.
Buy now £175.00, Amazon
Tag Heuer Connected Calibre E4
A lovely watch, but extremely expensive (the price is for the base model with a rubber strap, if you want a stainless steel bracelet prepare to add a bit more). This WearOS model can look very much like a mechanical watch until you start pushing buttons or fiddling with the OLED touchscreen.
To save battery life, the E4 has an ambient mode that only shows the time, adding to its camouflage as a normal watch, but underneath it’s monitoring your heart rate and step count, as well as staying on top of your notifications. Tag Heuer has put a custom skin on top of Google’s WearOS for this watch, meaning the typefaces used fit with the Swiss luxury label’s branding. It’s a small touch, but it goes a long way toward creating a cohesive whole from disparate parts.
So things like your daily schedule, the weather, fitness information and messages are beamed directly to the watch face. There's also a microphone built into the watch, so you can use it to talk to Google Assistant.
Buy now £1500.00, Jura Watches
Verdict
Smartwatches are developing and evolving all the time, gaining new capabilities depending on what their designers can fit into the small cases. Our top three Android smartwatches are a disparate bunch, but cover the gamut of options.
There's the Samsung Galaxy, a full WearOS watch that’s essentially a mini computer in its own right. The smart sports watch, Garmin’s Venu 2, gives a little more for the exercise-minded. And Fossil’s hybrid Collider looks just like an analogue watch until it starts showing you notifications of your WhatsApp messages.
