Google is gearing up to upgrade its Wear OS 4 as it announced the release of a new text-to-Speech (TTS) engine.
As per the brand, it uses “decreased prosody ML models to bring faster synthesis on Wear OS devices.” From this statement, it’s pretty clear that this new TTS engine will surely work better, smoother, and faster on devices even with limited memory.
The expectations are that the new TTS functionality should increase battery life and enhance the performance of the Galaxy Watch 4, Galaxy Watch 5, and Galaxy Watch 6 models. It appears that the brand will make it available along with the next system update.
Google says that the new TTS engine will take just 10 seconds to load after the device boots up. The brand notes that it is meant for brief interactions; for instance, accessibility services, coaching cues for exercise applications, navigation cues, and reading aloud incoming alerts through the watch speaker or Bluetooth-connected headphones.
The aim behind designing the new Wear OS 4 text-to-speech engine is just for short interactions such as reading notifications or offering guidance while working out. It avoids lengthy content like articles or podcasts.
As per the announcement post, Google says that the new TTS engine is capable of supporting more than 50 languages, and it comes with seven preloaded languages by default, which are as follows:
- English
- Spanish
- French
- Italian
- German
- Japanese
- Mandarin Chinese
Whereas OEMs have the power to choose to offer a different set of languages, When setting up a smartwatch, if a user chooses a language that is not pre-loaded, the device will download it while it is on Wi-Fi and charging.
