A Classic build with next-gen features
For a few years now, the Galaxy Watch range has followed a familiar pattern. One year, we get a new Galaxy Watch and a Watch Classic. The year after, Samsung gets a little creative, and the standard Galaxy Watch is followed by something a bit more experimental. We’ve previously seen the experimental Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, and then the Galaxy Watch Ultra arriving with the Galaxy Watch 7.
With last year’s Galaxy Watch debuting a new Classic model, we had no reason to believe that tradition would be changing. However, leaked codenames seem to suggest that we’ll see a Galaxy Watch 9 Classic arrive alongside a Galaxy Watch 9 and an updated Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, as well.
Android Authority was digging through the code of a recent Wear OS update, as it loves to do, and it discovered mentions to “fresh9”, “wise9”, and “projectv2”.
While this doesn’t suggest much by itself, the Galaxy Watch 8 and Watch 8 Classic were known as “Fresh 8” and “Wise 8” during development. The connection to the Watch Ultra 2 is a little bit more tenuous, though the previous model was codenamed as “Project X2”, and the potential link is obvious.
Android Authority also discovered that Google had made small changes to the code around the Pixel Watch 4‘s Raise-to-Talk feature. The existing code for the feature has been joined by a version marked as “WearOS”, along with a “3p” addition. As Android Authority posits, this could mean Raise-to-Talk is to be pushed out to Wear OS more widely, with “3p” standing for “third party”.
Of course, this is purely speculation, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be true. There’s little benefit for Google in keeping Raise-to-Talk as a Pixel Watch-only feature, as it would bring wider Gemini use to other smartwatches.
We don’t have too long to wait to see whether these rumors are true, as it’s expected that Samsung will reveal its new smartwatch range on July 22.