On Wednesday, Google officially confirmed that it was making the Pixel Watch, but the visualization provided was light on specific specifications, as it is still available in a few months. 9to5Google has already learned that the Pixel Watch is powered by the Exynos chip, which originally debuted with the Samsung Galaxy Watch in 2018.
According to a source, Google’s Pixel Watch uses the Exynos 9110, a Samsung chip that was first released in August 2018.
Late last year, we announced that the Pixel Watch most likely uses a Samsung chipset. Many have speculated that Google will use the newly announced Exynos W920, which is in the Galaxy Watch 4. This would give the Pixel Watch the advantage of the latest performance and efficiency associated with the 5 nanometer chip and Corex-A55 cores.
Instead, the Exynos 9110 is built on a 10nm process with two Cortex-A53 cores. This is similar to the Snapdragon Wear 4100+, although this Qualcomm chip is 12nm, which in turn is less efficient. With the launch of the W920, Samsung advertised “CPU performance of about 20 percent and ten times better graphics performance than its predecessor.”
Most likely Google is using the older chip, because the Pixel Watch project started some time ago. When the early development of the Pixel Watch began, a time when the 9110 was new, it was based on Android 9 Pie, before later moving to Android 11.
At the time when the Exynos W920 was available – assuming Samsung already sells to third parties – switching chipsets may have slowed the development of the Pixel Watch and started too much to ensure a change in the main component. As far as we know today, there is nothing to suggest that this is happening.
However, it is unfortunate that this long-awaited Pixel device does not use the latest specifications after all this time. Exynos 9110 was used for the first time in the original Samsung Galaxy Watch, which was released in the third quarter of 2018. It is also in 2019 Watch Active and Active 2, as well as in Galaxy Watch 3 from August 2020. Due to Tizen, it does not it is possible to make comparisons of battery or performance.
Of course, the chipset is not everything. That’s why we can even look at Google’s own Pixel 6, which bases its Tensor processor on a technically obsolete chip compared to Snapdragon’s latest offerings. Equally important is how Google optimizes the hardware. The big question is how this old chip affects battery life. Earlier we announced that the Pixel Watch will have a 300mAh battery.
By comparison, the Fossil Gen 6 has a battery and chipset of a similar size (albeit 12nm) and is officially said to get 24 hours, which we also found. This is also the case with Wear OS 2, which is supposed to be less battery efficient. Another consideration is how Google has somewhat hinted that the Snapdragon 4100+ is not enough to launch Wear OS 3. In particular, Google said that – “in some limited cases” – the user experience of the existing 4100+ watches on Wear OS 2 will be “affected” after the upgrade. It is not clear if this affects the Pixel Watch in any way, as it starts with Wear OS 3 out of the box and needs to be fully optimized.
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The Pixel Watch is set to launch this fall with the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro. Samsung will probably release its second-generation Wear OS before that, and rumors have already said it will have a bigger battery, as this was a criticism compared to the Tizen wearable devices that were before. For those who want the latest and greatest specs, the supposed Galaxy Watch 5 may be a better purchase, to the detriment of the Pixel Watch. However, Google’s software add-ons, like the Pixel phones, can provide a significant counter, and the Pixel Watch is likely to excel in health and fitness thanks to Fitbit.
Ben Shun and Kyle Bradshaw contributed to this post
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