Wear OS 5 Prepares to Add UWB Support Ahead of Pixel Watch 3 Launch

GPS isn’t always practical to add support for, especially for really compact electronics with small batteries. Smaller devices tend to get lost more easily, so alternatives to GPS are needed to locate them. This is usually done via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, which are pretty much ubiquitous, but the accuracy of these technologies when it comes to tracking location, especially when distance and direction are determined by the strength of the received signal, leaves a lot to be desired. That’s why UWB is gaining popularity, and support for the technology is finally being added to Android smartwatches with Wear OS 5.

UWB, which stands for ultra-wideband, is a short-range wireless communication protocol that is incredibly good at determining the distance and direction between objects. A UWB transmitter can easily navigate to the location of a UWB receiver with sub-meter accuracy, and because UWB uses time-of-flight measurements between the transmitter and receiver rather than the strength of the received signal, the exact direction toward the receiver can be easily determined. It is no wonder that UWB is being adopted by manufacturers of object locators, because the technology can precisely guide users directly to the location of their personal belongings, and by car manufacturers, because UWB can help people navigate to the location of their parked cars.

The only problem with UWB is that, at least on the Android side, adoption of the technology has been pretty weak so far. Outside of Google’s Pixel Pro phones and a few Samsung Galaxy S and Z Fold devices, there aren’t many Android devices with UWB radios, which means there aren’t enough devices to justify building apps or accessories that take advantage of UWB. Thankfully, though, we’ll finally see the technology in Android smartwatches, starting with the upcoming Wear OS 5.

While I was reviewing the developer preview of Wear OS 5, which Google released in May, I discovered strings in the Settings app that suggest a new “Ultra-Wideband (UWB)” toggle would be added to the Connectivity preferences. The toggle’s description says that turning it on “helps identify the relative position of nearby UWB devices,” which is consistent with our understanding of the technology.

Ultra-wideband support was originally introduced with Android 12 in late 2021, the same year Google released its first smartphone with a radio, the Pixel 6 Pro. The following year, Android’s UWB stack became part of Project Mainline with Android 13. However, UWB support was not available in the Wear OS user interface, even though the latest version of the platform, Wear OS 4, is based on Android 13.

Since these strings appeared in the first developer preview of Wear OS 5, it means that Google is adding proper support for this feature in Wear OS via a user-visible toggle. Indeed, the toggle is clearly not a holdover from the standard Android codebase, as evidenced by the name of the Settings class that controls the visibility of the UWB toggle: com.google.android.clockwork.settings.connectivity.UltraWidebandSettingsFragment (If you don’t know, Clockwork is the codename for Wear OS.)

The likely reason Google is adding this option now is to prepare for the launch of new Wear OS smartwatches with UWB support. Android Power contributor Kamila Wojciechowska recently revealed in an exclusive report that the Pixel Watch 3 will have UWB support. This was confirmed by FCC documents that many believe are for the upcoming Pixel Watch 3 series. Given our findings that Wear OS 5 is adding a UWB toggle, it’s almost certain that some upcoming Wear OS smartwatches will support the technology, and it looks like the Pixel Watch 3 will be the first to do so.

As for why Google might want to add a UWB radio to the Pixel Watch 3, we can only speculate. It will likely be useful for pinpointing the location of items or objects. The recently announced Moto Tag, for example, has a UWB radio that is currently not in use. However, we recently reported that Google is preparing to improve the location tracking in the Find My Device app using UWB. This would allow for pinpointing the location of the Moto Tag with the Pixel Watch 3, assuming all goes as expected.

Another potential use case that Kamila mentioned earlier is enabling a smartwatch to be used as a digital car key. This feature would allow the watch to not only unlock the car without touching the door handle, but also precisely locate the car in a dense parking lot.

UWB support could be incredibly useful in smartwatches, so we hope that the Pixel Watch 3 and Wear OS 5 adding support for the technology will force other Android smartwatch manufacturers to follow suit. Are you excited about UWB in smartwatches? Let us know in the comments below!