There’s usually precious through tech rumors at the dying embers of the year – but the Pixel Watch is keeping us more than entertained.
News of a forthcoming Google Pixel Watch is hotting up, and now 9to5Google's APK team has spotted what it believes is a host of watch faces belonging to the forthcoming smartwatches in Wear OS code.
The report reveals videos of watch faces inside the Wear 3.0 emulator, and many of which match designs seen in the leaked images of the Pixel Watch from earlier in the year. We've actually matched some of the selection (below) to some of the original Jon Prosser renders (above).
The inference is that this cache of watch faces are destined for the Pixel Watch.
The design of the watch faces is quite telling, and reveals some aspects of what we can expect from Wear 3.0 and the Pixel Watch.
There’s some seriously fun and colourful designs, with striking animations and complications – and it’s clear there will be a strong visual identify explored via watch faces for the new smartwatch brand.
And the selection also sheds light on how Fitbit might play a part in Wear OS and the Pixel Watch. There's a Fitbit watch face, with the company’s logo and branding, and also some of the key Fitbit metrics of steps, stairs climbed and calories burned (see below).
However, the report says that the Fitbit element was only available in the US region of the emulator, which may hint that Fitbit integration itself could be geographically limited when it lands next year.
It’s another key piece of evidence that Google is readying its own smartwatch for 2022.
According to the leaks, the Pixel Watch is set to land in Q2 2022. That’s around the timing expected for Wear 3.0, which has been released on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4, but not not rolled out to any existing Wear OS smartwatches.
You can read the complete list of smartwatches that will get Wear OS 3.0 here.
How we test
James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.