Victoria Song

Still! This is a sign that perhaps Google Assistant may soon arrive on other third party Wear OS 3 watches as well. At least, one can hope.

But how exactly do you make a clear smartwatch look cool? You can’t see through an OLED display or the battery. What about light leakage from optical sensors? It wouldn’t just be clear straps, could it? All I know is if it’s not as cool as the clear Swatch, it’ll give new meaning to “nothing to see here.”

Samsung already got FDA clearance for this feature last month, but now it’s got Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety to sign off too. Plus, it’ll be introduced to 11 more countries across South America, Europe, and the Middle East whenever the One UI 5 Watch update arrives later this year. (Check out the entire list here.)

That’s 13 countries! No small feat when you think about how tedious regulatory clearance is.

You can read through the findings (PDF), but essentially, the more active the user, the easier it was for researchers to find their home addresses — especially in remote areas. If that creeps you out, go to Settings > Privacy Controls > Aggregated Data Usage to opt out.

The Zone only live tracks nitrogen dioxide and wildfire air is made up of much more, but I’m writing up a post that goes into all this in more depth, so stay tuned for that as well.