9to5Google discovers references to new Fitbits, seemingly without Wear OS

9to5Google has found references to three new smartwatches in a teardown of the Fitbit app, but none of them appear to run on Wear OS 3. Fitbit says it is working on a smart watch with the new operating system from Samsung and Google.

9to5Google discovered the references in the Fitbit Android app .apk file. These are devices codenamed Hera, Rhea and Nyota. The first two would have screen resolutions of 336 by 336 pixels, which corresponds to the resolutions of the Fitbit smartwatches Sense and Versa 3. The two could therefore be successors. The third, Nyota, is said to have a screen resolution of 124 by 208 pixels, just two rows of pixels behind the same resolution as the Fitbit Luxe.

9to5Google goes on to say that the references to the three devices were found “in code related to the software bridge that connects smartwatches to smartphones via Bluetooth.” The editors of the site argue that a Wear OS smartwatch would not need this software bridge, because that os has its own way of communicating with a smartphone. That’s why it wouldn’t be about Wear OS.

Fitbit CEO James Park was clear about it in his speech at Google I/O 2021: “In the future we will make smartwatches based on Wear OS”. However, none of these three models seem like the smartwatch Park was talking about at the time. Fitbit has not yet announced anything about a Wear OS 3 smartwatch. The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 is still the only smartwatch on the market that runs on Wear OS 3, the version of the OS that is a product of the new collaboration between Google and Samsung.

The Fitbit Sense (2020)