Wear OS 5: new features, eligible watches and more

Wear OS 5, the next update to the popular Android watch platform, will arrive later in 2024. Announced during Google I/O 2024, the update will focus on three key areas: improving the battery life, new watch faces, and a horde of new fitness features.

While Wear OS 4 added features like easier watch transfers, new apps, and a new watch face format, Wear OS 5 appears to focus more on optimization, extending the life of your watch Android current and filling the gaps of the latest operating system.

We’ll explain every Wear OS 5 feature Google has revealed so far, which Android watches we plan to update to Wear OS 5, and everything you need to know.

Wear OS 5: new features

Google’s Wear OS 5 announcement outlined a long list of upcoming features. We may discover more feature updates when it launches, but this news has given us something to start with.

For starters, Wear OS 5 will bring “performance improvements” such as “running a marathon uses up to 20% less power.” This may or may not be because the Hybrid Wear OS interface relegates health sampling to the coprocessor, or other changes behind the scenes.

Google’s watch face format introduced in Wear OS 4 will also add new “flavors.” Users choosing a watch face will also be able to choose between different colors and complications for each watch face, including new complications such as “Goal Progress” which shows your completion percentage towards a goal such as 10,000 steps .

Google will make this new WFF XML the default option for Wear OS 5, limiting downloads of other formats like AndroidX from early 2025. Your old watch faces will still work and receive updates, but will not have no access to new complications.

Wear OS developers will find other backend changes that will hopefully make Wear OS apps more user-friendly and dynamic. In particular, Google says these apps will “ensure your app performs optimally across the full range of device sizes and font scales.” Now that you can find Android watch screens ranging from 1 to 1.5 inches, developers need to make their apps look good across the board.

On the fitness side, the Wear OS backend for data tracking (Android Health) gets new running form metrics: ground contact time, stride length, vertical oscillation, and vertical ratio. Fitness apps will for the first time have the ability to share data like this to and from Health Connect in the background, as well as pull data from your entire workout history, not just the last month.

Wear OS 5 watches will support “debounce goals,” which is a fancy way of saying that athletes can set a training goal like “keep my heart rate between 130 and 160 bpm for 30 minutes” and have the watch alert them after a short delay if they do so. fall out of reach. Currently, Wear OS 4 watches cause your watch to vibrate whenever you’re out of range, leading to false positives and annoyed runners.

A UI 6 watch

Samsung is yet to reveal many hard facts about One UI 6 Watch. A test build of Samsung Wear OS 5 was spotted in early May, but we don’t know any details except that it will be based on Android 14 and arrive alongside the Galaxy Watch 7 this summer.

We know that Samsung, like Google, will focus on fitness updates. Last January, Samsung unveiled its “My Vitality Score” update which will arrive this summer on the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy Watch 6. It will combine your sleep, activity, heart rate and HRV data to determine your level. energy and your preparation for training.

Additionally, Samsung will generate “Booster Cards” that “give insight into the ‘why’ behind your health results”

This data does not only applies to Wear OS 5 since the Galaxy Ring will also create this data and you will be able to see everything on your smartphone. But we assume that One UI 6 Watch will make your Vitality Score or Booster cards visible on the watch as tiles or complications on the watch face.

Wear OS 5: when is it coming?

Google promises that Wear OS 5 will launch “later this year”, i.e. in 2024. It has not yet promised a specific release date. THE Wear OS 5 Developer Preview was posted online on May 15.

Samsung typically launches its One UI Watch spinoff from Wear OS this summer alongside the latest Galaxy Watch. Wear OS 3 and 4 arrived in August 2021 and 2023 respectively, but only on Samsung watches. We believe Wear OS 5 will roll out alongside the Galaxy Watch 7 in August 2024.

However, the “stock” version of Wear OS 5 will not arrive until October 2024at the launch of the Pixel Watch 3.

The latest generation models will likely receive the update shortly after the newer models; Last year, the first Pixel Watch received Wear OS 4 five days after the Pixel Watch 2 launched, while the Galaxy Watch 5 received it a few weeks after the Watch 6.

Aside from Google and Samsung, other Wear OS brands don’t have a public update schedule. Some companies take months or even years to update their watches to new versions. Mobvoi, for example, is still working on upgrading its Ticwatch Pro 5 series to Wear OS 4, so Wear OS 5 might be a long way off for some, if it arrives.

Wear OS 5: eligible watches

Here are the current Wear OS watches confirmed to receive the update, along with our best guess for the release month:

• Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 (August)
• Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 (August)
• Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 (August)
• Google Pixel Watch (October)
• Google Pixel Watch 2 (October)
• OnePlus Watch 2 (Unknown)

Additionally, the upcoming Galaxy Watch 7 and Pixel Watch 3 are expected to launch with Wear OS 5.

Samsung watches will receive four major Wear OS updates, so the Galaxy Watch 4 should receive an additional update in 2025 after Wear OS 5. Google promises three years of operating system updates, so Wear OS 5 could be the last feature update for the Pixel Watch 1.

The OnePlus Watch 2 has two guaranteed operating system updates; we can hope for a quick Wear OS 5 update this fall, but we have no precedent to compare it to.

As for watches currently running Wear OS 3.5 like the Xiaomi Watch 2 Pro and TicWatch Pro 5 Enduro, we believe they will receive Wear OS 4 but have no guarantee regarding Wear OS 5.