We revealed at the beginning of May that Google plans to announce the Pixel Watch 2 alongside the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro this fall. 9to5Google Some key Pixel Watch 2 specs can now be reported, including upgrades to the processor, battery, and health sensor.
Pixel Watch 2 chip
According to the sources, the Pixel Watch 2 will be powered by the latest generation “W5” Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset.
It’s not clear what, if any, level of customization it is, but the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 was announced last July and just arrived on our first Wear OS watch, the TicWatch Pro 5 we just reviewed. There’s also the regular Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 without the Qualcomm coprocessor that has so far been used mainly by wearable device makers in China (Oppo Watch 3).
This 4nm SoC features four A53 cores clocked at 1.7GHz with dual Adreno 702 GPUs (1GHz). In comparison, the Exynos 9110 from the original Pixel Watch is built on a 10nm process with two Cortex-A53s.
Google’s shift from Samsung Exynos to its second-generation wearable is very noticeable, and quite surprising. Typically, we’d expect the 5nm W920 to be used in the Galaxy Watch 4 and 5. Another possibility is the rumored W980, expected to appear in the Galaxy Watch 6. The Pixel Watch is just one of Google’s product lines, so it’ll be too early to guess how it affects The change in wearables on foundry decisions on the phone side, where Tensor features more customization.
The battery on the Pixel Watch 2
The big impact of this change, according to what we hear, is a lot of improved battery life. While the battery on the Pixel Watch 2 shouldn’t be much larger than what we have today, Google is seeing more than a day’s worth of use with the always-on display (AOD) enabled.
This is a major upgrade and leads to immediate improvement; The original is rated for 24 hours with AOD off. Having said that, people today can easily keep the screen on and on all day (but not much more than that). The Pixel Watch 2’s battery life can conceivably last two days without a charge if the settings are tweaked to conserve battery, which can come in handy when traveling.
The new chipset is undoubtedly responsible for this boost, while Google has teased Wear OS 4 as featuring “many updates and improvements to help your app run as smoothly and efficiently as possible.” The Pixel Watch 2 is due to arrive in the fall, supposedly one of the first devices to launch with Wear OS 4.
Fitbit + Pixel Watch 2 sensors
Finally, in terms of specs, we hear the Pixel Watch 2 has similar health sensors Fitbit Sense 2. The highlights of the Fitbit OS are the continuous electrical activity (cEDA) sensor for stress management and tracking throughout the day, as well as the skin temperature sensor. Other Fitbit devices measure the variation in your skin temperature at night via “existing sensors,” but the Sense 2 offers a dedicated component, though it still doesn’t show the actual temperature.
We expect to see the Pixel Watch 2 announced alongside the Pixel 8 later this year.
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