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Wear OS 4 is coming to the original Pixel Watch, but not for a while
- Google has announced that Wear OS 4 will come to the Pixel Watch.
- While the Pixel Watch 2 will launch with the OS, it won’t arrive on the Pixel Watch until later this year.
- Wear OS 4 is based on Android 13.
When Google announced the Pixel Watch 2 at its Made by Google event, it said the smartwatch will support Wear OS 4 when it launches. But what about the original Pixel Watch? It looks like it will also get the wearable OS, but you’ll have to wait a while.
On the Android Developers Blog, the tech giant announced that the latest version of Wear OS will come to the Pixel Watch. But while the Pixel Watch 2 will have the OS right away, the system update won’t arrive on Google’s first smartwatch until later this year. The company did not provide an exact date for the rollout.
Wear OS 4 is based on Android 13 and brings several new capabilities like enhanced tile animations, more seamless data transfers, and optimizations for performance. As the Mountain View-based organization points out, Android 13 is several versions newer than the current version of Wear OS on Pixel Watches.
Although the fourth iteration of the OS will be on the Pixel Watch 2, it won’t be the first wearable with the OS as that title goes to Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 6. It was later followed by the Galaxy Watch 5 series and the Galaxy Watch 4 series. Google even mentions that developers can continue to use Samsung Galaxy Watches to test their apps on Wear OS 4.
However, Google says the Pixel Watch 2 is the only smartwatch with all of Wear OS 4’s capabilities. Pre-orders for the Pixel Watch 2 have already started, with general Google Store availability starting on October 12.