New features are coming to that Pixel Watch you bought over Black Friday
ThePixel Watch, like many of Google’s products, launched with a pretty robust feature set, but also a promise that more functionality would be coming soon. Today, Google’s drawing attention to a handful of updates that are landing in the near future, ranging in importance from novel to potentially lifesaving.
First off,Fitbit’s Sleep Profiles are now available on the Pixel Watch. For the uninitiated, Sleep Profiles are a Fitbit Premium feature that analyzes your sleep habits — timing and duration — and assigns you one of six animals that shares similar slumber patterns. Potential Profiles include animals like the bear, which represents a consistent sleep schedule with plenty of time spent in REM, and the dolphin, which goes to bed later and tends to take naps during the day.
Compared to the more detailed insights Fitbit’s sleep tracking provides, especially with Premium, Sleep Profiles are more of an entertainment feature than an informational one. But hey, fitness tracking doesn’t always have to be clinical and boring. Google says if you’ve got Fitbit Premium and you wore your Pixel Watch to bed for at least 14 nights in November, you should have a Sleep Profile animal today.
There are also a couple of new Wear OS tiles, whichGoogle touched on a few days ago. One is for your favorite contacts, giving you easy on-wrist access to the people you talk to most frequently, and another is a new Weather tile that highlights sunrise and sunset times for the day and spells out just how much daylight you have left. These tiles were initially introduced as new Wear OS features, not new Pixel Watch features, so unlike Sleep Profiles, they should be available on a variety of devices soon.
Finally, and most importantly, Google is reiterating that fall detection is coming in 2023. With fall detection enabled, your Pixel Watch will be able to use its sensors to determine when you’ve fallen and send a notification asking if you’re alright. If you fail to respond to the notification — because, for example, you’re unconcious — the watch will call emergency services on your behalf, potentially saving your life in the process. We’ve known fall detection was slated for a 2023 releasesince before the Pixel Watch was released, but it’s good to know that the feature is still on schedule.
While the Pixel Watch wasn’t the segment-defining slam dunk we hoped it’d be, it’s still among thebetter Wear OS optionson the market today. It’s a shame the wearable launched without these features, but as it gains more functionality over time, it’s inching ever closer to justifying its steep $350 MSRP.
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We’ve waited for Google to make a watch for over a decade, and the Google Pixel Watch has finally arrived. The first Android smartwatch with Fitbit health tracking, the Pixel Watch aims to help you stay fit or get fit easily. Plus, Wear OS 3.5 brings us Google’s vision for a wearable UI and exclusive Wear OS apps for Google services, like Google Home.
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