In 2026, Apple, Google, and Samsung will all stop pushing software updates to millions of smartwatches still strapped to Americans' wrists — devices that track heart rates, hold payment cards, and cost hundreds of dollars — leaving users with hardware that technically functions but is quietly becoming a security liability.

This isn't an accident. It's the business model. The big three wearables makers each set support windows so short that your expensive watch is functionally obsolete before the band shows wear. Apple is dropping five watch models with a single update — the Series 6, 7, 8, second-generation SE, and the first Ultra. The Series 8 and original Ultra launched in 2022, meaning devices barely three years old get the axe. Google's Pixel Watch 2, released October 2023, loses both Wear OS updates and security patches after October 2026 — a three-year window the company itself confirms on its official support page. Samsung is taking a similar path with its Galaxy Watch 5 lineup.

Engadget framed the mass cutoff as a natural cycle — "a lot can change in three years" — and buried the security implications in the seventh paragraph. The real stakes are higher than a missing feature toggle. When your watch stops receiving security patches, contactless payments and sensitive health data stored on the device become sitting ducks. You paid for a product that can process credit card transactions and track your heart rhythm. Now the same company that sold you on those features is telling you the hardware can't be trusted to keep doing them safely.

Apple's justification is particularly galling. According to Engadget, the cutoff appears hardware-related — "modern Siri works best with the chips inside Apple Watch Series 9 and up." Translation: your three-year-old watch works fine, but we need to sell you a new one, so we're locking you out of software that would run on your chip just to create an artificial reason to upgrade.

Then there's the double standard. Google offers seven years of support for its Pixel smartphones but only three for its Pixel Watches — the shortest support lifespan among the major brands, as Engadget noted. If Google can keep a phone secure for seven years, it can do the same for a watch. It chooses not to.

9to5Mac, for its part, didn't cover the smartwatch obsolescence story at all this cycle — its reporting focused on Apple's upcoming iMac refresh with the M6 chip. The outlet was happy to hype new hardware but had nothing to say about the hardware Apple is preparing to cast aside.

The e-waste angle writes itself. Millions of functional devices pushed toward landfills not because they're broken, but because the companies that made them decided they should be replaced. Working Americans who shelled out $400 or more for a watch three years ago are now told to shell out again — or live with an insecure device strapped to their body.

The question isn't whether these companies have the right to end support. It's whether a three-year window for a product that costs this much and handles this much personal data was ever anything but a scheme to extract recurring revenue from consumers who can't afford annual upgrades.