Here’s why Apple Watch Series 6, 7, 8 and Ultra lost watchOS 27 compatibility

At WWDC26, Apple revealed watchOS 27 and made a shocking announcement that numerous smartwatches, including Watch SE 2, Series 6, 7, 8, and the first-gen Watch Ultra, won’t get this software update. This news has upset the Apple Watch users worldwide, but the company has shared an explanation that might disappoint them even further.

Cait Dooley, Apple Watch and Health Product Marketing Manager, told TechRadar that watchOS 27 performance and power efficiency.

As for the latest version, it brings a new AI model-powered Siri assistant that supports natural language conversation. You can expect it to throw more casual sentences toward you, unlike the previous version.

Apple says that this capability could only serve best with the latest hardware supported by Watch Series 9 and later, Ultra 2, 3, and SE 3.

So, here are the two things to understand: first, that the older watches cannot provide enough performance to support watchOS 27 features, and the second is that these watches could drain their battery pretty fast.

However, Apple promised that not getting an update won’t impact their pairing experience with an iPhone. In fact, the executive confirmed that they’ll continue to receive security updates as long as they can support and you can continue to use it with the latest iOS software.

That means you can still use the old Siri, but you cannot test the latest Siri AI features, which should not be a problem for many Watch users.

This might not be much to take away the disappointment, but that’s what the previous-gen watch users will get.