Google will reveal its first own-brand smartwatch, called the Pixel Watch, alongside the new Pixel 7 smartphone family, later this year.
Although that autumn launch is still a little while away, information about the upcoming wearable is starting to leak out. The latest tidbit of information concerns battery life and outlines the device’s support for Fitbit health-tracking features.
Discovered by 9to5Google, and buried within the latest version of the Fitbit app, is a mention regarding how the Pixel Watch will handle sleep tracking and its own battery status.
A message intended for future Pixel Watch owners to read states: “Get a notification before your bedtime goal if your Pixel Watch battery is too low to track a night’s sleep.”
This in itself is a useful feature for a smartwatch to have, as battery life of most models often struggles to reach 24 hours, making sleep tracking tricky. The Apple Watch, for example, has a quoted battery life of 18 hours, meaning users need to give the battery a daily top-up to ensure it can last all day, then track sleep right through the night.
The software also includes an example of what a notification will look like, stating: “Time to charge your watch. You’ll need at least 30% charge to track a full night’s sleep.”
Given this, it looks like an earlier claim of a 24-hour battery right is starting to sound accurate. As eight hours is recommended for a proper night’s sleep, we can extrapolate that 10 percent charge would equal about 2.67 hours, or a third of that eight-hour night. Multiple by 10 to reach 100 percent and we come to a battery life of about 26 or 27 hours.
This is a decent amount for a fully-fledged smartwatch, especially given those eight hours of sleep tracking will likely have the heart rate monitor constantly running, and potentially using more battery than during other parts of the day.
