Android Wear 5.1 is surprisingly full of new features, and the lock screen may be one of the more exciting ones. Until now, there was no OS-level way to secure your Wear device from unauthorized use. With Wear 5.1, a pattern lockscreen has been introduced, and it should pop up any time Wear detects your device is no longer on your wrist. For a quick walkthrough of the feature, see the video below.

Setting up a lock screen is dead simple, just go into settings, find the lock screen option, and enter the 4-point-or-greater pattern you want to use (twice). At this point, your watch is set up to lock its screen whenever it no longer detects it's on your wrist.

Except I couldn't get it to do that. I repeatedly removed and put on the watch in an attempt to cause it to appear, but without fail the watch remained unlocked. I jumped, I jostled, I went for a walk for 5 minutes outside, then took the watch off - no lock screen. So, that might be a problem (perhaps specific to the Watch Urbane, I'm not sure). But if you go into settings, the proof of concept is simple enough to enable - just hit "lock screen now" and your watch's display will lock.

Great in theory, slightly cumbersome in practice. Still, a cool new feature from Android Wear 5.1. Check out our other Wear 5.1 feature spotlights here.