Google’s Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are the corporate’s most fascinating gadgets in years. They may really succeed on the Pixel’s final objective of being the shining instance of what Android telephones can and ought to be able to.

It’s excessive time that Google adopted that instance with a Pixel Watch that does the identical factor for Wear OS. It’s fairly doubtless that Google is already engaged on one thing alongside these traces: When we requested, Rick Osterloh informed The Verge’s Dieter Bohn that its personal Wear OS wearable is only a matter of time. He famous that Google’s acquisition of Fitbit continues to be “pretty early in the integration” for the reason that buy solely went by means of a number of months in the past — it takes time to develop a product, in spite of everything, particularly one with a brand new working system that Fitbit has by no means used earlier than. But Osterloh did tease that “you’ll see them [the Fitbit team] build wearables on Wear OS in the future,” with the group already “hard at work at that.”

It’s no secret that Wear OS is in determined want of some flagship {hardware} (or any {hardware}, actually). If you purchase a shiny new Pixel 6 this week and are on the lookout for a smartwatch working the most recent and best Wear OS 3.0 software program, your solely possibility is Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4. Every different Wear OS gadget is old-fashioned.

Now, the Watch 4 will not be a nasty smartwatch by any means, however regardless of the brand new, shared Tizen / Wear OS collaboration, it’s nonetheless a distinctly Samsung gadget. That implies that every part from the fundamental UI to funds to health monitoring to the digital assistant is Samsung-flavored experiences, not Google ones. Google Assistant isn’t even accessible on Samsung’s watch, and a lot of the primary apps just like the calendar, climate, contacts, and calculator are set to Samsung’s defaults, not Google’s choices.

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge

The largest inform? If you do wish to use a Pixel 6 with a Galaxy Watch 4, you’ll have to put in a collection of Samsung apps in your cellphone to make use of it correctly, one thing that might largely defeat the purpose of getting a Google-made cellphone within the first place.

For all of the years of Pixel telephones, Google has by no means actually tried a Pixel Watch to go together with it. The closest was again in 2016, when the corporate was apparently working with LG on smartwatches forward of the Wear OS 2.0 relaunch. But in accordance with a Business Insider report, Google {hardware} lead Rick Osterloh himself killed off the mission simply earlier than the unique Pixel was launched as a result of they “didn’t look like what belonged in the Pixel family,” main Google to tug its identify from the merchandise. That turned out to be the correct name, as these LG wearables have been, put merely, horrible (LG itself now not makes Wear OS watches — or Android telephones in any respect for that matter).

The firm has repeatedly squashed ideas that it would construct a Pixel Watch through the years, with Miles Barr, the previous director of engineering for Wear OS, commenting in 2018 that Google wasn’t on board but with the thought of a “one-size-fits-all watch” and that Google’s “focus is on our partners for now.”

But years later, Google’s listing of {hardware} companions is carrying skinny. In 2021, Wear OS has largely been saved alive by dogged efforts from Fossil and Mobvoi’s TicWatch lineup, neither of which screams “cutting edge consumer hardware.” Neither firm has plans for a Wear OS 3.0 watch this yr, both. If Google desires an ideal smartwatch for Android customers, it must take the identical strategy right here because it did with the unique Pixel: make a correct, Google-built watch that exhibits each prospects and {hardware} companions the way it’s completed.

Both Apple and Samsung’s smartwatch efforts are testaments to the facility of how good wearables will be when deep {hardware} and software program integration full one another. Owning an Apple Watch makes utilizing your iPhone higher, providing you with further well being monitoring metrics and higher entry to notifications, glanceable info, and issues like music management in your wrist. But it’s not for nothing that the 2 finest smartwatches round — the Apple Watch and the Samsung Galaxy Watch — are gadgets which might be actually solely suited to homeowners of their respective smartphones.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

A Pixel Watch might do the identical factor for Google that the Apple Watch and Galaxy Watch do for Apple and Samsung: function a must have accent that helps drive Pixel homeowners to develop into the Google ecosystem with extra well being and health providers.

The Pixel 6’s largest innovation isn’t a selected AI characteristic or digicam improve. It’s the ethos behind it that Google was prepared to pause, check out what it thought-about was essential to have in a really nice Android cellphone, after which construct a bespoke gadget that particularly did these issues. With Google successfully relaunching Wear OS for the third time with Wear OS 3.0, the time is greater than ripe for Google to do the identical for the wrist, constructing a bespoke Pixel Watch that might fill the same function.

Google has the instruments to do it, too. Wear OS is in higher form than it has been in years, due to the Samsung partnership and an inflow of latest customers on the platform (Samsung is one of the biggest players within the smartwatch world outdoors of Apple). Qualcomm has comparatively new Snapdragon 4100 chips prepared for {hardware} companions, assuming Google doesn’t merely make its personal in-house Tensor-style chip for smartwatches, too.

And in fact, again in January, Google itself spent $2.1 billion to purchase Fitbit, which has been main the sphere of fitness-focused wearables for years now, along with its mysterious $40 million buy of Fossil’s smartwatch know-how and R&D division in 2019. It simply wants to mix all of the items collectively into the type of smartwatch that may compete — and even lead in — the wearable area.

Which implies that it would simply be a matter of time earlier than the Pixel 6 (or maybe a future Pixel 7) will get the Pixel Watch that Android followers have been ready for — though it’s doable in a twist of irony that, when it does arrive, Android’s Wear OS savior may bear a Fitbit brand, not a Google one.

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