Observables are something that are not specific to Ionic or Angular and are provided by the RxJS library. Observables are almost similar to the promises but can do a lot more. It can deal with multiple values at a time rather than just resolving one value. You can even subscribe to an observable to manipulate the data which is associated with it. Observables are considered to be “lazy”, i.e. they won’t get executed until and unless they are subscribed to. Various operations can be applied to the observables for modifying it and returning a new one. You can even create your own observable. The observable patterns are combined into one with the help of subject which is preferred for simple implementations.