Even with an old Samsung watch, you will no longer need to unlock your smartphone

The Watch Unlock function, which allows you to unlock a smartphone using your watch, is coming to Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 5 watches

Last June, we discovered that Google was preparing an automatic unlocking function for smartphones by simply connecting to a connected watch running Wear OS. Two months later, although a user was able to discover the screen corresponding to this functionality on a pixel smartphone, there was still no news of its deployment.

Finally, the function “ Watch unlock» (unlocking by the watch) should arrive soon thanks to an update for the first time on Wear OS watches. As reported by the specialized site9to5Googleresearcher Mishaal Rahman has indeed shared on Twitter certain functions expected for the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 and Galaxy Watch 5 Pro with their update to One UI 5 Watch.

One UI Watch 5 based on Android 13 is rolling out for the Galaxy Watch 5, and as I suspected, the build declares the https://t.co/izeCCqNhVF_unlock feature. Active Unlock is the name for the API underpinning the upcoming Watch Unlock feature.

Thanks to @armrods for checking! pic.twitter.com/CN0lR8yKph

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) August 31, 2023

“As I suspected, the update cites the com.google.android.clockwork.active function. Active Unlock is the name of the API behind the upcoming Watch Unlock feature», Explains the researcher. Concretely, the update proposed on last year’s Samsung watches should therefore make them compatible with the automatic unlocking of the smartphone when it is connected via Bluetooth to the connected watch.

A function expected for the coming weeks

We still did not know which watches would be able to take advantage of this functionality. In the past, Google has held a few demonstrations, but they were limited to its own connected watch, the first Pixel Watch. Finally, it seems that unlocking by the watch could also arrive on other watches running Wear OS. We obviously think of watches from Samsung, but also potentially those from TicWatch, Fossil or the future Pixel Watch 2 expected at the beginning of October.

As a reminder, unlocking by the watch will allow users to do without the unlocking pattern, PIN code, facial recognition or fingerprint reader if the smartphone is used near a compatible connected watch. We now expect a deployment in the coming weeks.

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