Pixel Watch confirmed to support transit cards in Google Wallet with future update

Abner Li | Nov 22 2022 - 9:48 am PT

The first Pixel Watch app update has widely rolled out at this point, with Google last week sharing a few other community updates, including future transit card support.

In a vaguely newsletter-esque forum post called “The Google Pixel Watch minute,” a “Trending topics in the community” section provides some interesting answers.

As we’ve expected, the company is “planning to bring” support for adding “a closed loop transit card to your Wallet on the Google Pixel Watch.” This is coming “in a future software update.” At the moment, Wallet is just aimed at on-wrist payments and Google originally promised more Wear OS features by year’s end. It’s not clear if this will require a full device OTA or just an update to the Google Wallet app.

Meanwhile, Google addresses how you can’t use the Pixel Watch’s speakers, which are “designed for phone calls and notifications,” to listen to music. Apps immediately prompt you to connect via Bluetooth:

So, it’s an overall better experience to use headphones when listening to music, given the size and placement of watch speakers.

There’s an understandable power/battery constraint to using speakers, but the Galaxy Watch does let you do it for local music files.

Speaking of battery life, which is mostly fine and gets most people through the day, Google says the following:

The Google Pixel Watch is a fully featured smartwatch with LTE capabilities, a beautiful bright display and robust haptics. These features require additional power compared to what is needed for other devices, but also provides our users with helpfulness and health insights even when they don’t have their phone.

It also reiterates that the only officially supported charger is the one that came in the box.