Wear OS 4 brings Android 13 to your wrist

Google announced a major update for its smartwatch platform at the Google I/O developer conference last month. Wear OS 4 will debut later this year with several new features and functional improvements. But one major platform-level change could go unnoticed by users. Turns out the company has skipped Android 12 and updated Wear OS directly to Android 13. Renowned Android expert Mishaal Rahman has confirmed the Wear OS is based on Android 14. Wear OS 3 runs on top of Android 11.

Unlike Android OS for smartphones and tablets, Google’s Android-based smartwatch platform Wear OS doesn’t get major version upgrades every year. The company debuted Wear OS 3 with Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 series in August 2021 and followed up with Wear OS 3.5 last year. More importantly, last year’s release didn’t upgrade to a new version of Android, which forms the base of the platform. Both versions have Android 11 at the base. That’s despite Android 13 being already available when Wear OS 3.5 debuted.

Google was expected to finally jump to Android 12 with Wear OS 4 this year. But to our surprise, it has jumped direct to Android 12, skipping Android 12. When the new Wear OS version rolls out later this year, probably starting with Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 6 series next month, it will bring the current-latest stable version of Android to your wrist. Of course, Android 14 will roll out in the stable channel in a few months, but it’s still nice to see Google upgrading its wearable platform to a fairly recent Android version.

Samsung has already begun beta testing the Wear OS 4-based One UI Watch 5

The Android 14-based Wear OS 4 could debut on Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 6 series next month. The Korean firm has already announced that it will host its next Galaxy Unpacked event on July 27. Along with the new smartwatches, the company will also launch the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5 foldables and the Galaxy Tab S9 series flagship tablets at the event.

But ahead of that, Samsung has begun beta testing the One UI Watch 5 update for the Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 5 series. One UI Watch 5 is the latest version of the company’s custom smartwatch platform based on Wear OS 4. The beta program is live for users in the US and South Korea. It’s unclear if Samsung plans to expand it to other regions. The big update may roll out publicly to users around the world after the Galaxy Watch 6 series hits the market.