Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 7 and Watch Ultra are the first smartwatches to get access to Wear OS 5, Google’s latest operating system for wearables, as revealed during today’s Unpacked event, alongside a . These product announcements also came with .
That means Samsung’s recently announced gadgets will be the very first smartwatches to get Wear OS 5, ahead of Google’s own products. That will change later this year, when the Pixel Watch 3 is expected to launch. Interestingly, this is exactly how Wear OS 4 fared. The operating system first debuted on the Galaxy Watch 6 before shipping in the Pixel Watch 2.
Google made it official at I/O 2024, and the new software is packed with useful updates. The UI is largely the same as Wear OS 4, but the software has been optimized to improve battery life by up to 30 percent. There are some new health-monitoring features, including stride length analysis while walking or running.
The OS does include some efficiency upgrades, with Google saying, for example, that Wear OS 5 uses 20 percent less power than OS 4. There are a number of additional watch face options. This software update doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but the added efficiency will certainly be a boon for many consumers.
By the way, there’s no word on when the OS will be ported to Samsung’s older smartwatches. We’ll have to wait and see. For now, you’ll have to shell out $300 for the Galaxy Watch 7 or $650 for the Ultra to get access to the OS.
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