The latest version of the Wear OS 3 emulator in Android Studio has offered a preview of what appear to be watchfaces for Google’s long-rumored “Pixel Watch.”
Back in May, at Google I/O 2021, the company launched an emulator for the newly announced Wear OS 3. While Samsung has since released the Galaxy Watch 4, which served as the first device to run on Wear OS 3, that smartwatch features numerous Samsung-specific modifications.
As it stands today, other OEMs like Fossil and Mobvoi won’t have watches with Wear OS 3 until sometime in 2022. This leaves the emulator in Android Studio as the only way to experience what the stock version of Wear OS 3 will be like on future watches.
Over the last few months, Google has steadily updated this emulator with newer apps and software. Just this week, Android fans on Reddit showed that the Wear OS emulator had many changes from when we first saw it in May.
Digging deeper into this updated experience, our APK Insight team discovered a video within the files of Wear OS 3’s emulator. The video appears to show a variety of watchfaces that will be available on an upcoming Wear OS device.
In total, 10 different watchfaces are showcased, including one that prominently shows the Fitbit logo. More importantly though, two of the watchfaces, pictured below, were also seen in internal renders of the Pixel Watch that were shared by Front Page Tech on YouTube earlier this month.
This strongly implies that this collection of watchfaces is intended for the long-rumored Google Pixel Watch. That being the case, let’s take a closer look at each of the watchfaces and what they have to offer.
First up, we see a very straightforward face that simply displays the time as numerals, in pleasant shades of pink. The second follows a similar design, but complications surround the time on three sides with info about the weather, your heart rate, and the date.
The third face shown in both videos shows the time numerically, surrounding it with a step counter that gradually fills in a progress ring around the border of the screen. Notably, this watch face features a shoe icon next to your step count. This shoe design is identical to what is used in the Fitbit app today to represent your step count.
The fourth watch face artistically depicts something of a landscape, with the primary colors of the design gradually shifting as the sun moves lower in the sky. It’s not clear if the sun moves according to the time of day, as the watch’s displayed time never changes.
The next three watchfaces all appear to be variants on each other. They each feature the same design of a very thick hour hand, thin minute hand, and an even slimmer second hand. The differences come in the number of complications – weather, step count, etc. – shown and how the clock’s numbers are shown, if at all.
The next watch face after that shows the current hour in the center, along with two rotating wheels that represent the minutes and seconds.
The second to last watch face puts the clock off-center, with three complications shown on the right-hand side. The final watch face shown in the video is one of the most interesting, as it features a prominent Fitbit logo and uses a color typically associated with that app.
Interestingly, these final two watchfaces are not included in an alternate version of the video found within the same location. So far as we can tell, this second video is for use outside of the United States, suggesting that these two faces – and possibly Wear OS’s broader Fitbit integration, announced in May – may be exclusive to devices in the US, at first.
One thing that’s abundantly clear from these watchfaces is that Google intends for the next generation of Android-powered smartwatches, including the Pixel Watch, to be colorfully and playfully designed. This could easily be seen as a continuation of the efforts the company began with Material You on Android 12.
More on Wear OS:
- Google releases a new Wear OS 3 preview, offering a better look at the design outside of Samsung
- Fossil cancels unannounced Diesel-branded Gen 6 Wear OS watch
- Wear OS gets redesigned ‘System updates’ screen that explicitly mentions the ‘Android version’
Author: Kyle Bradshaw
Source: 9TO5Google
