Suunto, Polar and probably a lot of others were doing the same. Android was attractive because it would be a huge saving on software development costs, have maps out of the box and allow third-party apps.

At least Polar had a watch that would run in low-power mode by default and had a separate CPU that could run Android Watch when needed but that would drain the battery quickly. They had the sense to not make it the flagship model and it looks like the current models don't have anything like that.