Google’s long-rumoured smartwatch, the Pixel Watch, has finally seen the light of day. The tech behemoth officially unveiled the smartwatch during an event on Thursday, signalling they are finally ready to challenge all other smartwatches for a market share and give Android fans a viable alternative.
Google Pixel Watch WiFi and LTE Full Specifications
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The unveiling comes four months after Google first teased the Pixel Watch during its annual I/O developers’ conference in May. At the conference, Google gave a preview of its first smartwatch but failed to reveal core details around functionality, design, and pricing. Now, those details have been made public.
Google Pixel Watch Design
The Google Pixel Watch is a clean, minimalist smartwatch with a rounded design. It comes in three colours: matte black, gold, and silver. On the watch’s left side are cutouts for the microphone and the speaker, while on the right side sits a navigation button and a haptic rotating crown – similar to the digital crown on Apple Watch 7. It uses a proprietary bands connector that mimics how lenses twist into place on camera bodies.
By using a proprietary bands connector on the watch, Google constrains users to only the band types they provide, as standard watch bands won’t fit, though we will definitely see replacement from strap manufacturers. Google offers seven band types: Silicone bands, Fabric bands, Stretch bands, Link bracelets, Milanese-style mesh bands, and Two leather straps differentiated by style. All these band types would be available in many different colours.
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Google Pixel Watch Models
The Pixel Watch comes in two flavours – Wi-Fi and LTE. Both flavours are available in a single size 41mm case and sport a 1.2-inch always-on AMOLED display with a max brightness of 1,000 nits for outdoor visibility. Its display is covered with a dome-shaped Gorilla Glass 5 glass, while its case is made of stainless steel. The watch is rated 5 ATM water resistance, so you wouldn’t have problems swimming with it.
Platform and Storage
As expected, the Pixel Watch is bundled with Google’s Wear OS 3.5 platform and leverages Google’s longline of services, including Google Assistant, Google Maps, Google Home, YouTube Music, and Google Pay. To power all these apps and more, the watch relies on a Samsung-built Exynos 9110 CPU paired with a Cortex-M33 co-processor accompanied by a decent 2GB RAM and 32GB of storage.
One of the major selling points of the Pixel Watch is its focus on health and fitness. It isn’t surprising considering Google spent a whooping sum of $2.1 billion to acquire a top fitness tracking company, Fitbit, back in 2019, allowing them to gain access to Fitbit’s wellness and fitness technology.
Health Tracking
The Pixel Watch leverages many Fitbit tracking features such as sleep tracking, workout tracking, active zone minutes, etc. Although Google said it used its own machine-learning technology to improve the watch’s tracking accuracy. The watch comes with a bunch of health monitoring sensors, including a blood oxygen sensor, multi-electrical, accelerometer, optical heart rate sensor, and ECG sensor. Google is also offering 6 free months of Fitbit Premium and 3 free months of YouTube Premium on the watch.
Google Pixel Watch Battery Life
Under the hood of the Pixel Watch sits a 294 mAh battery advertised to last up to 24 hours. The watch comes with a magnetic charging dock with a USB-C cable. According to Google, the watch can go from 0% to 50% in 30 mins, while a full charge will take roughly an hour and 20 minutes.
Unlike many smartwatches in the market today that offer compatibility with Android and iOS devices, the Pixel Watch just like the Galaxy Watch 5 is compatible with only Android devices, specifically, devices running on Android 8. 0 or higher.
Release Date and Price
Google will ship the Pixel Watch at $350 for the Wi-Fi version and $400 for the LTE version in the US. In Europe, both models of the watch would sell for €379 (Wi-Fi) and €429 (LTE), while in the UK, it will go for £339 (Wi-Fi) and £379 (LTE). General availability starts from October 13, but interested would-be users can pre-order it.
At the time of writing this article, you can pre-order the Pixel Watch only directly from Google Store and Amazon. You can also get it for free when you pre-order a Pixel 7 Pro.