Google Will Release New Wear OS Updates Every Year, Pixel Watch To Get Three Major OS Updates

Google is finally getting serious about its wearable platform. After debuting its Wear OS with last year’s Samsung Galaxy smart watches, the latest Google Pixel Watch is one of the most significant milestones in the operating system’s journey. It is one that will ensure a consistent focus resulting in a constant pace of updates. 

According to the director of product management for Wear OS, Bjorn Kilburn, Google plans to “release a new version of Wear generally every year in a similar fashion to mobile,” as told to Wired magazine in an interview. However, it is unclear if these will be major number updates like a jump from Wear OS 2.0 to Wear OS 3.0. 

The pace of updates on Wear OS comes as a way of making the latest Android features for “watches and hearables” get baked into the wearable platform as well. Kilburn also promised “quarterly Wear updates” that will deliver new experiences throughout the year, much like Feature Drops on the Google Pixel devices. 

A flipside of a constant cadence of updates also means that Wear OS 3 manufacturers will be responsible for pushing out over the air updates to their Google Wear watches, and a quarterly pace could become overwhelming for manufacturers. Google also said the Wear OS 3 updates from Wear OS 2 for smart watches powered by the Snapdragon Wear 4100 and 4100+ platforms will be out later this year. 

Google announced its first smart watch, the Google Pixel Watch at the Pixel 7 launch event. It features a 1.2-inch display and is offered in both WiFI and LTE flavours, in  41mm size. It has a heart rate sensor as well as an ECG sensor and Fitbit health tracking features. 

The Pixel Watch, however, has not launched in India, and is only available globally. In Europe, the Pixel Watch WiFi will cost you EUR 350 while the LTE variant is priced at EUR 400.