The Pixel Watch 4 is set to be revealed in full at an August 20 Made by Google event, along with the Pixel 10 series. We’ve seen lots of leaks about all of the above. Just today, the Pixel Watch 4’s charger leaked — and it’s not what I expected.
Renders of the purported new charger were first published this morning. It’s certainly unusual: a small pill-shaped cradle with what look like two electrical contacts. You can get a look at the images yourself over on Android Headlines.
The novel thing about this design is that the Pixel Watch 4 is apparently meant to slot into the charger sideways, rather than sitting flat on top. The way the watch sits in
the charging cradle makes the display visible from the side.
This design is unusual in the current smartwatch landscape. Although there are third-party chargers that prop up smartwatches in similar ways, the chargers included with wearables like the Galaxy Watch 8, Pixel Watch 3, and Apple Watch Series 10 are all pucks that clip onto the watches’ backsides.
A tiny little bedside clock
My first thought seeing this new charger is that it’ll be great for overnight charging. With the watch standing up on its edge, its display is visible from the side, making the time and the watch’s charging status visible while the charger sits on a bedside table.
This isn’t a wholly new concept; the first- and second-generation Moto 360, released in 2014 and 2015, each came with chargers that similarly propped the watches up for easier bedside viewing.
Using smartwatches for sleep tracking is much more popular now than it was in the Moto 360’s heyday (batteries just didn’t hold up back then), so a watch working better as a bedside clock is admittedly a niche benefit. But I don’t like wearing a watch to bed and typically track my sleep with a smart ring, so this change is right up my alley.
Can this one stick around, please?
I’m a little disappointed that Google is changing the Pixel Watch’s charging connector again, after switching from wireless inductive charging to a Fitbit-style magnetic pin charger in last year’s Pixel Watch 3 series. It looks like no existing Pixel Watch chargers will work with the Pixel Watch 4.
That incompatibility means plenty of older chargers will end up in the trash. That takes some of the wind out of the sails of a leak last week that pointed to the Pixel Watch 4 being significantly more repairable than previous models have been.
That’s a shame, but I’m still looking forward to this weird little change in the Pixel Watch 4 — it makes it just a little better for my own use case. I’m just crossing my fingers they stick to this latest charging model for more than a year or two before changing it up again.
