It feels like Google is arbitrarily withholding new features from previous-generation Pixel Watch wearables, and I don’t like it one bit.
This past week, Google upgraded its Pixel Watch wearables to Wear OS 6.1. The update brings Android 16 QPR2 to watches for the first time, and more importantly, includes some cool new features. The highest-profile addition is new gesture controls that let you pinch your fingers or flick your wrist to perform certain actions with one hand, a useful option that competitors like Samsung and Apple have offered variations of for some time in their own wearables.
There’s just one problem. These gesture controls are exclusive to the latest Pixel Watch 4, with no immediate plans from Google to bring them to older models. And if you ask me, that feels pretty un-Pixely.What’s in an update?
The Wear OS 6.1 update brings a couple of new features to the Pixel Watch 4. There are the gesture controls and some behind-the-scenes improvements to Smart Replies that are supposed to make them better while also saving a little power. The Pixel Watch 3 gets the Smart Replies tweaks, but no gesture controls. Pixel Watch 2 is also eligible for Wear OS 6.1, but so far as I can tell, all it brings to Google’s second-gen watch are some security fixes. The first-gen Pixel Watch got its last guaranteed update in October, so it doesn’t benefit from Wear OS 6.1 at all.
Withholding some new features from previous-gen hardware is inevitable. Sometimes an older piece of tech lacks necessary hardware components, or doesn’t have the headroom to support a new feature without tanking performance or battery life. The Pixel Watch 4 does run on a newer chipset than the Pixel Watch 3, but the Watch 4’s Qualcomm SW5150 uses the same Cortex-A55 CPU as the Watch 3’s SW5100, and the two share the same clock speeds.
