8
Verge Score
Think of this as part one of the Pixel Watch 5 review as most of the new features aren’t out yet. That said, GPS rocks.
Find Hub on Google-powered smartwatches now includes a separate Find People app. As 9to5Google notes, it’s barebones: it shows a list of everyone you’re sharing location with, but to actually change any settings or see their location on a map, you have to open your phone. Perhaps there’s more to come.
We live blogged almost 90 minutes of a show that was, honestly, better than expected. Our video team cut it down to eight.
We’re ready for some bad jokes during Google’s celebrity-packed live show.
The Made By Google keynote, hosted by Trevor Noah, kicks off at 6PM ET. Stay tuned to this website starting at 5:30PM for our live blog. Victoria Song will be there live, with Jay Peters, Jake Kastrenakes, and myself following remotely. Let’s see what happens.
We’re talking offline Gemini, proactive AI suggestions, better GPS maps, insulin resistance trends, and a $50 price hike.
Living an optimized, self-quantified life can get a little out of hand.
The watches sport a new chip, bigger batteries, and new health metrics. But the updates come with another price hike.
Marketing materials for the Galaxy Watch 9 and Watch Ultra 2 have been shared online by leaker Evan Blass. The Galaxy Watch 9 reportedly features a Snapdragon Wear Elite chip, and is shown in three color options. The Watch Ultra 2 upgrades reportedly include a 800mAh battery and up to 5,000 nits of peak brightness.
The EU is excluding wearable devices, including smartwatches, fitness trackers, and smart glasses, from an incoming rule that will require a wide range of electronics to have user-replaceable batteries. The Nintendo Switch 2 isn’t exempt, though, and will come with a replaceable battery in the EU by the time the law goes into effect in February 2027.
Pebble says it’s sent free replacements to everyone who reported Time 2 hardware issues like cracked screens and broken touch panels “regardless” of whether the defective watches (out of 19,000 in service) were still covered under its 30-day warranty.
…we will continue replacing reasonable reports of glass cracking for free as long as we can. At some point, we will shift to offering a replacement at a highly discounted amount.
watchOS 27 feels like a culmination of several years of smaller updates.
It’s been missing from the first two versions of the beta, but you can now continue conversations from your phone on your wrist, and vice versa. I’m playing around with it now, but I’m curious to hear from fellow smartwatch nerds. (You’ll need a Series 9, Ultra 3, or SE 3 and later to run the dev beta.)
Leaked renders of the Galaxy Watch 9 and Watch Ultra 2 suggest not much is changing in Samsung’s new wearables, at least from the outside. There should be performance upgrades though, plus the bump to Samsung’s take on Wear OS 7. Expect both next month alongside new foldable phones.
Cait Dooley, Apple Watch and Health Product Marketing Manager, was quick to tell TechRadar that older Apple Watch models will still work with newer iPhones and receive security updates. It’s just that Siri AI and some other watchOS 27 features require a bit more horsepower.
“The great new features in watchOS, including the capabilities of Siri AI and the new tap gesture, work best with the processing power that is in Apple Watch Series 9 and later, Ultra 2 and later, and SE 3. Older devices can still be paired with iPhones that are running the latest software and continue to receive security updates, so they can continue to have a great Apple Watch experience.”
The Walkie-Talkie app for Apple Watch that lets users send push-to-talk voice messages to one another over FaceTime has been quietly removed in the first watchOS 27 developer beta, with no option to reinstall it. It was first introduced alongside watchOS 5 in 2018.
It’s less about which gadget. It’s better to be honest about what slots best into your life right now.
Digital health screeners weren’t a thing until the Apple Watch. It’s shaped how we think about wearables ever since.
