If you have an original Pixel Watch or Pixel Watch 2, good news: Wear OS 5 will begin rolling out today and, with it, a handful of new features.
Wear OS 5 and the Recorder app are rolling out to older Pixel Watches
Backward compatibility — you truly love to see it.
Backward compatibility — you truly love to see it.
is a senior reporter and author of the Optimizer newsletter. She has more than 13 years of experience reporting on wearables, health tech, and more. Before coming to The Verge, she worked for Gizmodo and PC Magazine.
The most interesting one is the Recorder app. This was originally introduced as an exclusive to the Pixel Watch 3, and it lets you record audio directly from the wrist. You can then open it up — along with a transcript — on your phone. (This feature does, however, require that you have a Pixel phone.) Other updates include improved Camera controls and a grid-view app launcher. The latter is a neat surprise — previously, you could only view apps in a list format, which could get tedious to navigate if you downloaded too many.
Wear OS 5 also brings with it a number of battery-saving improvements. When Google announced it at I/O earlier this year, the company said that running a marathon would consume about 20 percent less battery life.
Don’t worry if you don’t see the update right away. While the rollout starts today, Google says it’ll continue through the week in phases, depending on the carrier and device.
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