Google Maps is coming to WearOS and users will be able to use it without an active connection to their handsets, the American tech giant announced during Samsung’s Unpacked event recently. The feature will be introduced to WearOS sometime later this year. Google Maps had added aerial and immersive views of around 100 of the world’s most popular landmarks towards the end of last month. In June, a report stated that Vodafone joined hands with Google to extend the battery life of a smartwatch by reducing the “chatter” between the device and the network.

Google has announced that it is bringing offline Maps navigation to WearOS during the latest Galaxy Unpacked event. The announcement comes as Samsung launched its Galaxy Watch 5 Series during the event. The navigations feature is expected to be introduced to WearOS sometime later this year and users will be able to operate Google Maps on WearOS without their phone around.

As mentioned earlier, Google Maps had added aerial and immersive views of around 100 of the world’s most popular landmarks towards the end of last month. It combines Street View and aerial images alongside advances in computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) to provide the digital model of virtual maps.

With the latest update, Google Maps will also display detailed cycling routes for cyclists indicating the presence of stairs or steep hills in their direction. Along with this, the location sharing feature on the platform is getting improvements with the addition of arrival and departure notifications.

In June, Vodafone and Google’s Android team started collaborating to optimise battery life on WearOS. The mobile operator developed an API (application programming interface) that enables apps and operating systems, such as Google Android’s Wear OS, to reconfigure how they communicate with its network, said Vodafone’s director of network architecture Santiago Tenorio.