Samsung is giving its latest smartwatches a longer lease on life. The Galaxy Watch 9 and Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 will receive five major Wear OS updates, the longest support timeline yet for an Android smartwatch.
Samsung already offers longer software support for its Galaxy Watch lineup than Google. The Pixel Watch family only gets three years of OS updates. By comparison, Samsung promises four OS updates and five years of security updates for every model released since the Galaxy Watch 4.
With the Galaxy Watch 9 and Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, the company is expanding its update policy to include one additional OS upgrade (via SamMobile). Both watches will receive five major OS upgrades and five years of security updates.
This is also two additional years of OS updates over Google’s Pixel Watch. That gives Samsung’s new watches a significant advantage over the Pixel Watch and helps negate their higher price tag to some extent. It also matches Apple’s support timeline for its Apple Watch lineup.
The new Galaxy Watches run Wear OS 7-based One UI 9. Based on Samsung’s promise, they should receive the Wear OS 12 update and security patches until 2031.
Faster Snapdragon chip behind the longer software support?
The new Snapdragon Wear Elite chipset powering Samsung’s latest watches likely plays a role in enabling this longer software-support window. And so, the new update policy is unlikely to apply to the Galaxy Watch 8 family, which uses the Exynos W1000 chipset.
For now, these watches remain eligible for four major Wear OS updates and five years of security updates.
What’s unlikely to change is the rollout of new updates. Samsung currently updates its Galaxy Watch lineup once every quarter with a security patch. Major new features only come as part of a One UI or Wear OS update once every year. That differs from Google’s approach with the Pixel Watch, which receives new features through quarterly Pixel Drops.
With the Pixel Watch 5 supposedly sticking to the same Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 platform, Google may not match Samsung’s update policy with its next smartwatch.
