Google’s Pixel Watch and Samsung’s Galaxy Watch5 may be based on the same Wear OS 3.x platform, but they won’t get the same level of software support. According to a very revealing Wired interview with Björn Kilburn, Google’s director of product management for Wear OS, Pixel Watch will receive three years of software updates.
On the other hand, Samsung’s Galaxy Watch5 will be four years old. The explanation for the discrepancy is that, as of Wear OS 3.x, Google is no longer responsible for updates for wearable devices it does not produce. Previous versions of Wear OS had all their updates coming from Google, and in theory it sounded great, but in practice it did nothing for more timely releases.
So with Wear OS 3 going forward, each smartwatch manufacturer is responsible for their own updates. Not only that, but connectivity too – previous versions of Wear OS all used the same Wear OS by Google phone app to connect to watches, but now every manufacturer needs to develop their own pairing app. This is definitely not an issue for Samsung, which previously had smartwatches on other platforms, but it could prove to be a barrier to entry into the Wear OS ecosystem for smaller businesses, or simply those that aren’t willing to allocate a lot of resources for something like this.
Google’s Kilburn says the company’s intention is to release a new version of Wear OS every year, with quarterly updates coming to bring “new experiences” throughout the year among the biggest increases.
Unfortunately he couldn’t clarify the strange situation where the Pixel Watch comes with the Fitbit Wear OS app but not Google Fit pre-installed, even though the latter is available for all Wear OS devices via the Play Store. Will one of these apps be included in the other in a few months? We bet that, given Google’s history, it’s pretty much taken for granted. But at this point there is no official word on any of this.
If you have a smartwatch running Wear OS 2 and using Snapdragon Wear 4100 or 4100+, you are probably wondering what happened to Google’s promise to provide the Wear OS 3 upgrade in 2022. Apparently it’s still the plan, so you should get it “within this year”.
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