The new watchOS 5 update, which was introduced at the keynote event of the Worldwide Developers Conference this morning, will not be available on the first-generation Apple Watch models that were released three years ago in 2015.
There were some hints that support might be dropped for the original Apple Watch, including warnings in later watchOS 4 updates after Apple stopped supporting the watchOS 1 SDK.
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watchOS 5 will be able to be installed on Series 1, Series 2, and Series 3 Apple Watch models, while original Apple Watch models will not be able to be upgraded beyond watchOS 4.
The original Apple Watch likely does not have the power and battery life necessary for some of the newer watchOS 5 features, including Walkie-Talkie for touch-to-talk communications with friends, richer interactive notifications, automatic workout detection, and updates to the Siri watch face.
Top Rated Comments
What do we get? Walkie-Talkie...
The S0 battery life and performance is already not great. It's best for them to optimize watchOS for newer, faster devices. Looking at iOS, it seems like Apple is now supporting devices even longer once they got to a certain performance level. Hopefully the same happens for the Watch and we eventually get updates for longer once devices get fast enough.