The Pixel Watch 4 proved Google could make a truly great Android smartwatch, so for this year’s Pixel Watch 5, the company apparently doesn’t plan to change much. According to a Google Play Console listing spotted by 9to5Google, the Pixel Watch 5 may end up using the exact same Qualcomm chip as the Pixel Watch 4, just with a smidge more RAM.
The listing specifically names a device called “google godric_btwifi” using a “Qualcomm SW5100” with a 4x ARM Cortex-A53 CPU and a Qualcomm Adreno 702. That suggests Google is using a chip in the same Snapdragon W5 family as it did on its smartwatches starting with the Pixel Watch 2. It may even be the exact same Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 chip as the Pixel Watch 4 if the yet-to-be-listed co-processor hasn’t been changed. That’s a notable difference from early leaks that suggested Google might introduce its own Tensor chip for the Pixel Watch 5.
One place the smartwatch could be different is memory: the listing shows the Pixel Watch 5 as having 3GB of RAM, a 1GB increase over the Pixel Watch 4. This might not change the day-to-day experience of using the smartwatch, but it could enable new Gemini Intelligence features Google has planned.
Combined with leaked renders of the Pixel Watch 5, which show the wearable as looking more or less like the Pixel Watch that came before it, Google’s new smartwatch seems like not much of an upgrade. It’ll reportedly be available in new “Dark Anthracite” (dark gray) and “Pyrite” (green) colors, and Google will likely introduce new bands, but nothing about what’s leaked so far suggests the watch will do anything different than it did before.
Google could still wow in the software department—for example, the company patented technology for measuring arterial stiffness that could show up on a future watch—but it’ll still have an uphill battle selling the smartwatch. Dealabs reported earlier this month that the Pixel Watch 5 will likely start at $400, $50 more than the Pixel Watch 4. That price might be harder to swallow if the watch also looks nearly identical to last year’s model.
Increasingly, it seems like the Pixel Watch story Google will be telling at its upcoming Made by Google event will be focused on software. That’s one of the company’s strengths, but it remains to be seen whether the Pixel Watch 5 will be worth the upgrade.
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