If you enjoy tracking software releases, you are aware that Wear OS isn't the easiest to monitor. Despite being built on Android technology, it uses a different versioning mechanism than Android. Furthermore, updates to Wear OS are typically released several months after the Android version upon which they are built.

That might be confusing, but at least major updates to Wear OS have regularly been incorporated into major updates to Android. Though Wear OS 5.0 is based on Android 14, that appears to be about to change with the upcoming release of Wear OS 5.1, which is reportedly based on Android 15.

It has been purported by an "insider" that Wear OS 5.1 is presently undergoing internal testing on the Pixel Watch 2 at Google. Although this is presently known as Wear OS 5.1, Google may rename it to Wear OS 6 before it is released.

Should that fail, it indicates that Google has finally completely separated the Wear OS version from the underlying Android version, as Wear OS 5.1 is built on a distinct version of Android than Wear OS 5. This will make it more difficult to determine in the future whether a Wear OS version is running a more recent version of Android than another.

Wear OS 5.1 may be released soon, with reports suggesting it could be based on Android 15, bringing new features and improvements to smartwatches.