By this Christmas, there may be another juggernaut smartwatch on the market that will tempt you away from buying an Apple Watch 3, Samsung Gear Sport or something we haven't even heard of yet.
Rumors suggest Google is preparing three new smartwatches under the Pixel moniker set to run the latest Wear OS software and show off wearable operating system's true potential.
It'll likely have to compete with the Apple Watch 4 (that we expect to launch in September) and perhaps the Samsung Gear S4 (that could arrive in August) so it'll be a tough market for Pixel to succeed in.
That may be some difficult competition, but I have high hopes for what Google can achieve with this watch. Below are three reasons I believe the Google Pixel Watch will be a suitable alternative to anything else on your wrist.
It will be top end tech
So far we know very little about the spec inside the Google Pixel Watch. A Qualcomm representative has confirmed it is working on a new chipset to power top-end smartwatches, so it'll be the first new processor inside a wearable since early 2016's Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100 was announced.
He confirmed it'll be in a device before the end of the year, so there's no reason this won't be powering the Google Pixel Watch.
Google has to create a device here that can be the flagship and reference design for all other third-party manufacturers who are experimenting with the Wear OS platform, so we can expect the best of the best
The Pixel Watch needs to be a fitness powerhouse with a top of the range heart rate tracker, GPS and workouts built-in as well as tracking for swimming, cycling and a variety of other sports.
The design will need to be on point, plus the display will have to be bright and easy to read. It'll need to have NFC for mobile payments, LTE for listening to music and getting notifications on the go plus and great battery life to top it all off.
I believe for the Google Pixel Watch to succeed, it needs to have a similar or better spec level than the Samsung Gear Sport, LG Watch Sport and, especially, the Apple Watch 3. But there's a reason I believe Google can do that...
The Pixel shows what Google can achieve
Before 2016, Google used the Nexus brand to show off what Android should look like bringing in manufacturers like LG, Huawei and Motorola to manufacturer devices designed purely to show off the top features of the latest version of Android.
Now that honor goes to the Google Pixel brand, and while we've only seen two generations of that phone it's a device that's lauded as one of the best on the market, especially when it comes to photography.
Bringing that expertise in mobile tech to the smartwatch space, it should be able to make a top-end device.
This will be Wear OS as it's intended to look like without any extra bloatware like you can get on watches from third-party manufacturers or an annoying overlay that slows down or complicates how you navigate around the watch.
Wear OS is now ready for iPhone
More and more people are beginning to understand you can use a Wear OS watch with an iPhone. That's a big part of the reason Google rebranded its wearable platform by dropping the Android Wear title and opting for Wear OS instead.
If you didn't already know, you can connect and wear a Wear OS watch with your iPhone and get almost all of the same features as anyone running an Android device.
Most features are seamless on iPhone, too. For example, you can use Google Pay with a Wear OS watch that's connected to an iPhone as an alternative to Apple Pay.
Google is continuing to update Wear OS so it'll play even better with Wear OS, but the experience is already very similar to what you'd get on an Android phone. You won't get iMessage notifications, but it can control Apple Music and much more that we never thought you'd be able to do from a Google made product.
For that reason, the Pixel Watch will likely be a good alternative for your wrist. All of this said, we don't know what the Samsung Gear S4, Apple Watch 4 or other smartwatches released in the rest of the year will bring so it could be a different story at the end of the year.
