The Pixel Watch 2 may kiss Samsung chipset goodbye to battery optimization

Whatever the first Pixel Watch had to do, it wasn’t bad. That wouldn’t be good enough for her successor, which is rumored Debuts later this fall It’s called the Pixel Watch 2. Its only function is to last more than 24 hours, which is why it’s surprising and not surprising that the new generation of smartwatches will leave Samsung processors behind.

according to 9to5GoogleThe Pixel Watch 2 will use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon W5 Plus chip. The 4nm processor was announced last summer and promises to double the performance and enable multi-day battery life. On the one hand, this makes sense. The current Pixel Watch runs on Samsung’s last-generation wearable chip, the 10nm Exynos 9110, and its battery life stinks compared to the competition. When I reviewed it last fall, I got at least 12 to 15 hours if the always-on display was turned on. Without it, the clock could Extract approximately 24 hours if you nurse the battery and make a conscious, concerted effort to save energy whenever possible.

A somewhat old processor was a red flag, but realistically, Performance was a bigger priority than a multi-day battery for Pixel watch. Most Last year’s flagship watches got that much. Expect more from a first-gen smartwatch right out of the gate? This is like expecting Google that it might shame Apple for its adoption of RCS this decade. Plus, Wear OS has historically been hampered by horribly slow performance.

But 2023 is a different story. The Apple Watch Ultra can get you through several days on a single charge, and that’s before the low power settings are enabled. Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro also has a multi-day battery life. Sure, Samsung might have been okay with Google using the soon-to-be last-gen Exynos W920, but the Galaxy Watch 5’s battery life wasn’t quite so hot when it first launched. (It has since been improved thanks to software updates.) The Galaxy Watch 6 is rumored to have a newer chip, but it would be reasonable if Samsung didn’t want to share it with Google.

The thing is, we don’t know how reliable Qualcomm’s battery claims for the W5 Plus are yet because there’s only one One A smartwatch that has it in it now: Mobvoi’s TicWatch Pro 5. I just reviewed that watch, and sure enough, it gets me through several days on a single charge. However, it’s impossible to tell how much of a role the W5 Plus plays in its excellent battery life. The Pro 5 has a very low-power secondary display that dominates the screen the vast majority of the time and a gigantic 628mAh battery housed in a 50mm-diameter case. That’s simply not a path Google would see when the first Pixel Watch was 41mm thin and slim.

I’m also skeptical because Qualcomm was saying that years Its hybrid chip architecture results in excellent battery life. The Snapdragon Wear 3100 chip contains a processor and a coprocessor. Wear OS watches with the 3100 chip still have dismal battery life. The Snapdragon Wear 4100 chips also contain a processor and coprocessor. I present to you the Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition and its poor battery life. pixel clock also It had a co-processor paired with an Exynos 9110, and I’ve already told you how bad the battery life was. Forgive me, then, if I’m not sold that hybrid architecture alone is the magic bullet Google needs.

Another complicating factor is the fact that 9to5Google Reports indicate that the Pixel Watch 2 will have sensors similar to the Fitbit Sense 2 — including a continuous electrical activity (cEDA) sensor used to measure pressure and a skin temperature sensor. Continuous health tracking drains battery, plain and simple. The more developments you pack into the watch, the more draining the battery. This is one of the reasons why you don’t see Apple budge on its 18-day battery life estimate from year to year. Not that Apple doesn’t iterate and improve battery life in terms of hardware and software. Yes it is. It is constantly adding more and more features to the mix.

However, Google has clearly taken note of the Pixel Watch’s lackluster battery. At Google I/O earlier this month, I announced that Wear OS 4 is coming this fall and that better battery life (And cloud backups) used to come with it. All of these factors combined make me hopeful that the Pixel Watch 2 will last longer than its predecessor. I’m just not sure how much that is.