End of life for tech devices is kind of a fuzzy line. While people on tight budgets, or those who don’t need the latest and greatest features, often use their smartphones, tablets, and watches until they no longer run, the companies behind those devices eventually stop supporting them, which can open the door for hackers.
The wording varies by company, and it’s not always set in stone, but at some point users will stop receiving new features, operating system updates, bug fixes, and, most critically, security updates. And for wearers of eight different smartwatches, the next few months will bring an end to at least some of those updates.
Apple, Samsung, and Google are all ending or scaling back support for various smartwatch models in the coming months. Some will see updates cease in the coming weeks, while others will continue through year’s end. Regardless of how you’re affected, it might be time to rethink your device.
The end of support is generally not because of an issue with the hardware. It has more to do with manufacturer timelines and chipsets.
“Smartwatches are deemed end-of-life on a fixed schedule, not because the hardware fails, but because manufacturers pre-set a support window at launch and stop patching once it expires,” said Judson Dressler, head of the risk operations center at cyber risk company Resilience. “Most of the time it stems from engineering costs associated with maintaining older models and incentivizing new purchases. … The watch should maintain most of its functionality after that date. What it stops doing is receiving fixes for newly discovered vulnerabilities.”
Here are the watches nearing the end of their lives, at least as far as updates go.
Apple
Apple declares its products “vintage” after it stopped distributing them for sale more than five but less than seven years ago. As of today, that includes all Apple Watch releases through the Series 5. The upcoming release of watchOS 27, however, will move several additional watches to unsupported status.
Apple’s list of compatible devices for the new operating system excludes the Apple Watch Series 6, Series 7, Series 8, Apple Watch SE 2nd gen, and the first-generation Apple Watch Ultra. Since the Series 8 and Ultra are still within the window in which Apple generally offers support, this appears to be a hardware compatibility issue.
Apple will likely release watchOS 27 sometime in September, though it has not given a firm date yet.
Samsung
Owners of the Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro, both of which came out in 2022, will see some changes to the updates they receive, but it won’t be a complete end of support. Any Wear OS updates issued after the end of this year will not be compatible with those models. However, security updates will continue for the foreseeable future, likely at least another year.
The Google Pixel Watch 2, which hit the market in October 2023, will no longer be guaranteed software updates after October of this year, according to Google’s Support page for the watch. That includes both security updates and feature drops.
It’s worth noting that Pixel smartphones receive seven years of support, compared with the relatively short window for the watch.
Protecting yourself
If you’ve got one of these smartwatches and don’t have the budget or inclination to upgrade, you’ll want to change some of the ways you use it to guard against putting your data at risk.
You should stop using the smartwatch for anything that involves sensitive data, including contactless payments, health metrics, and account logins. Those are the things a hacker would target first, says Dressler.
You might also want to be careful about connecting to work or home Wi-Fi networks, as your outdated smartwatch could put them at risk.
“The bigger risk for anyone else on the network is that the watch stays paired to a phone and often auto-connects to home or office Wi-Fi,” says Dressler. “An unpatched watch on that network is an unmonitored device most endpoint security tools never scan, and it can serve as a foothold to reach other devices once it’s compromised.”