If you’re interested in getting one of Google’s brand new and first in-house Wear OS devices, then you may also be interested in living the phoneless lifestyle. With the Pixel Watch 4G LTE, your watch can work completely independently of your phone for only $100 more, coming in at $649AUD.
It’s not quite as simple as just grabbing the LTE variant and throwing in a SIM, however. Wearables are still seen as a secondary device to your primary phone, even when they aren’t tethered. This means you need a virtual number to get all of the cool features.
Telstra has been confirmed as the only current provider that can support the Pixel Watch 4G LTE, at least for now. Using the Telstra One Number service, your Pixel watch will be able to have data LTE connectivity and seamless mirror your mobile number for on-device answering, even when not tethered to the phone. It should go without saying that you need a Telstra Moblie Plan for this to work.
At $5 per month on top of your plan, it’s not the most expensive add-on you can get, but it’s enough to make you really want to have the feature before getting it. For $5 a month you get an eSIM that can move between Google’s, Samsung’s and Apple’s range of LTE watches, but only on one device at a time.
If paying an additional $100 AUD for the watch, and then $60 AUD a year for the connectivity is what you’re looking for you can preorder the Pixel Watch on the Google Store right now, and Grab a Telstra One Number on their website.
Really hope that they extend support for the Pixel Watch LTE to other carriers than just Telstra. I would consider switching except that Telstra is so much more expensive than my current phone plan (on Kogan mobile) that it would double my monthly bill.
5 bucks is cheap if you share calls and data with your phone.
Wish Google had thrown in the BT model for free with Pixel 7 preorders like in the UK and other regions. Telstra have a good bundle (Pixel Stand, Buds A, Nest Hub) though.