Pixel Watch 2 confirmed by Google's own code

Google code confirms the rumours: a Pixel Watch 2 is coming, and could arrive alongside the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro

Google Pixel Watch
(Image credit: Google)

Google's Pixel Watch has been a well-deserved hit, shifting nearly 1 million units in Q4 2022. So it was never in doubt that there would be a Pixel Watch 2, and details of that wearable are starting to leak. If the Pixel Watch is one of the best smartwatches you can buy, the Pixel Watch 2 could be better still.

So what's Google cooking? The latest news comes courtesy of the eagle-eyed APK Insight, who love nothing better than pulling apart apps' code and poking around the entrails to predict the future. And in the latest beta of the Google Search app they've found new assets relating to the Pixel 2, which appears to be codenamed Eos. There's a second, similar asset called Aurora, and that's likely to be a sibling smartwatch rather than an additional new product.

So far the app uses the same animations it did for the current Pixel Watch, suggesting that Eos and Aurora really are the Pixel 2. 

APK Insight have confirmed the Pixel Watch 2's existence. What about the specs?

What do we know about the Pixel Watch 2 specifications?

Google's code doesn't tell us anything about that. But previous leaks say that the Pixel Watch 2 will launch in October alongside the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro. It's expected to be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset, most likely from the latest W5 generation, which is a move from the Samsung Exynos in the current model. The specific chip isn't known yet, but guesses incluide the same W980 that's expected in the Galaxy Watch 6 or maybe the W920 that's in the Galaxy Watch 5.

One of the biggest rumoured changes is in battery life, which is apparently more than a day with the always-on display enabled. The current model can make it through a day, but only just. 

Last but not least it's also been rumoured that the Pixel Watch 2 will have similar health sensors to the Google-owned Fitbit Sense 2 such as skin temperature and electrodermal activity sensors. 

Carrie Marshall

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series. When she’s not scribbling, she’s the singer in Glaswegian rock band HAVR (havrmusic.com).