Your Pixel Watch 2 or Pixel Watch 3 can now spot scammers

The post Your Pixel Watch 2 or Pixel Watch 3 can now spot scammers appeared first on Android Headlines.

Apr 8, 2025 - 00:29

Summary: Google is rolling out its advanced scam detection feature to the Pixel Watch family. It will only be available on the Pixel Watch 2 and Pixel Watch 3. This also won’t work with every single phone or in every situation.

Scam detection is a feature that Google rolled out for the Pixel smartphones, and now the feature is making its way to Google’s Pixel Watch 2 and Pixel Watch 3 smartwatches. Google officially rolled out scam detection for the Pixel 9 series back at the beginning of March.

Scam detection works with phone calls and messages, and allows either of them to pick up whether or not the call or message is likely a scam. It’s capable of recognizing suspicious activity that may have otherwise snuck by, and is one of several protections Google has put in place to prevent users from being scammed. It works by analyzing common conversation patterns that are used by scammers.

As noted by Droid Life, the scam detection for Pixel Watch 2 and Pixel Watch 3 devices is part of a surprise update that Google started pushing out on April 7.

Scam detection on Pixel Watch 2 and Pixel Watch 3 requires a Pixel 9

While the Pixel Watch 2 and 3 will pair with just about any Android phone, including older Pixels, you’ll reportedly need a Pixel 9 for the scam detection feature. Google confirms that you will need a Pixel 9 or later for this feature to work on the watch.

Although scam detection is available on the Pixel 8, it uses on-device machine learning. The version that’s on the Pixel 9 is powered by Gemini Nano. Although Google doesn’t mention anything about the AI model in its community post, it seems like the Pixel 9’s version of scam detection is needed for it to work on the watches.

This doesn’t work on LTE

To be more clear, watches that have LTE support will have access to this feature. However, the scam detection will not support the LTE connection. It will only work if it’s connected to your Pixel 9 or later smartphone through Bluetooth. So this might limit some users. At the very least, it’ll limit when you can access the feature. Google says that for right now, it’s also limited to a US rollout. Only English is supported as well.

That being said, users can expect Google to expand on this. Likely adding support for more regions and languages in the near future. Scam detection will also need to be set up on your phone to work on the watch. You can access this from the settings menu in the Phone app.

The post Your Pixel Watch 2 or Pixel Watch 3 can now spot scammers appeared first on Android Headlines.