Fitbit Versa 4, Sense 2 and more inbound.

It looks like Fitbit is not initially embracing Wear OS 3 as was widely anticipated.

More: Fitbit Versa 4

Recent Releases

Fitbit Versa 3 and the well-specified Fitbit Sense were released in 2020 and once the acquisition by Google was finally sealed, it seemed obvious that Google would mandate the use of Wear OS 3. This view was further reinforced last year as the improvements to Wear OS 3 were quite significant and Samsung’s integration of it with Watch4 seemed to seal the fact that this was THE watch operating system that had a future linking to the Android world.

That said there was always a lurking doubt that changing Fitbit to Wear OS would require totally new hardware and a bag full of new apps to ensure everything that the Fitbit app platform offered would still be populated by the next generation of watches.

It has also been widely touted that Google will finally release a new top-end Pixel watch this year on Wear OS 3 (still likely) and we’ve even seen evidence that Samsung’s Watch5 (yes, really) will also be a Wear OS 3 beast.

The Intel

9to5Google has dredged the techie content of the Fitbit app and found references to these new devices and the specs. They just so happen to have similar specs to the existing Versa, Sense and Luxe models so it’s almost certain that the names will continue. Also found was a reference to code that explained the way the watch would communicate to the Fitbit app and, in a nutshell, it wasn’t how Wear OS would do it. The logical conclusion to all of this is that Google has simply iterated all the key watches for one more round.

Timeframe?

These details are all in the app, so I would expect sooner rather than later. However, the more sensible expectation would be Q3.2022.