The rumor mill has been teasing Android customers for years with the potential for a Google-made Android smartwatch, and a brand new report signifies it’d truly lastly be taking place.

According to an Insider report, Google is engaged on a Pixel-branded smartwatch versus a Fitbit one, which many had speculated would possibly occur after Google’s acquisition of Fitbit was finalized earlier this yr. That means the watch will possible be in an analogous vein as Google’s Pixel smartphones, which function a showcase of what Google software program is able to for different Android cellphone makers.

According to the report, the smartwatch is known as “Rohan” inside Google’s workplaces, which, OK! It’s spherical, not sq. just like the Apple Watch, and it has no bodily bezel. The watch is anticipated to supply fundamental fitness-monitoring options like step counts and a coronary heart charge monitor, plus different options lifted from Fitbit. The Insider report references particular Fitbit integration via a product referred to as “Nightlight,” one other inner codename that tells us little about what it’d do.

It’s unclear whether or not this watch might be referred to as the Pixel Watch. The codename “Rowan” has additionally been tossed round a couple of occasions by leakers like Jon Prosser, who revealed what presupposed to be renders of Google’s smartwatch again in April (although who is aware of if these are legit).

Google has been massively overhauling its wearables division over the previous few years. It acquired a few of Fossil’s know-how after which purchased Fitbit, and although it a Pixel Watch appeared inevitable at one level, the watch has by no means materialized. More just lately, Google rebranded the Android-based Wear OS software program platform and partnered with Samsung to maneuver the latter’s watches over from a proprietary OS again to Wear OS. You can now expertise the brand new Wear OS on choose smartwatches, together with the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4. Sales of the watch have helped increase Android’s wearables market share previously few months.

But all that’s nonetheless not sufficient to maneuver the needle to the place it must be. Google has to supply one thing distinctive to compete with the Apple Watch, which has dominated the marketplace for years and has pushed smartwatches from mere cellphone equipment into full-blown well being units.

Google will possible lean onerous on what its information can do in your well being and health. In September, the corporate disbanded its well being division, but it surely sounded extra like a restructuring because it pursued different well being initiatives. Rick Osterloh, Google’s head of {hardware}, talked about this yr at Google I/O (after which once more in an interview with The Verge) that the corporate could be consolidating its client well being efforts into Fitbit in order that it may “grow and knit together.” Hopefully, what they knit is an Android smartwatch that’s truly value sporting.