Even with an old Samsung watch, you won’t need to unlock your smartphone anymore


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

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro // Source: Chloé Pertuis for Frandroid

Last June, we discovered that Google was preparing an automatic unlocking function for smartphones thanks to a simple connection to a connected watch under Wear OS. Two months later, if a user was able to discover the screen corresponding to this feature on a pixel smartphone, there was still no news of its deployment.

Finally, the function watch unlock(unlock 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 some expected functions for the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 and Galaxy Watch 5 Pro with their update to One UI 5 Watch.

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“As I suspected, the update cites the com.google.android.clockwork.active feature. Active Unlock is the name of the API behind the future Watch Unlock function“, explains the researcher. In concrete terms, the update offered 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 next few weeks

We still did not know which watches would be able to take advantage of this feature. In the past, Google did run a few demos, but they were limited to its own smartwatch, the first Pixel Watch. Finally, it seems that the unlocking by the watch can also happen on other watches under Wear OS. We obviously think of Samsung watches, but also potentially those of TicWatch, Fossil or the future Pixel Watch 2 expected in early October.

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

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