It may not be easy to keep track of the versions of Wear OS, the operating system developed by Google for smartwatches. Although it is based on Android, Wear OS versions, which have a different versioning system compared to Android, usually come out a few months after the Android versions they are based on. However, this situation seems to change with Wear OS 5.1.
Google developed Wear OS 5 based on Android 14. Wear OS 5.1 is said to be based on Android 15. Thus, the integration between major Android versions and Wear OS versions will be broken.
Wear OS 5.1 may also be called Wear OS 6
According to information allegedly coming from within the company, Google is currently testing Wear OS 5.1 with the Pixel Watch 2. It is also possible that the company will release this version under the name Wear OS 6.
If that doesn’t happen, Wear OS 5.1 will be based on a different version of Android than Wear OS 5, meaning Google has finally separated the core Android version from the Wear OS version entirely. This could make it harder to quickly tell in the future whether one Wear OS version is running a newer version of Android than another.