Mobvoi confirms that its next-gen smartwatch, likely the TicWatch Pro 4, will run Qualcomm’s Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 chipset. It’s the first wearable device to use the new Qualcomm SoC, which promises massive battery gains and twice the performance of the previous Snapdragon Wear 4100+.

As you’ve probably noticed, the Android smartwatch market is knee-deep in stagnation. There are two reasons for this lack of progress—first, Qualcomm spent about six years creating awful, inefficient, and outdated chipsets.

And the second reason for this stagnation, oddly enough, is that Google is forcing things to improve. It intentionally made the new Wear OS 3 platform too demanding for existing Snapdragon chips, and even debuted the operating system on a Samsung smartwatch with a Tizen chipset.

The new Snapdragon W5 series is Qualcomm’s response to Wear OS 3. The company promises that this new chipset (the W5+ model, specifically) will deliver twice the processing power while consuming 50% less energy than previous SoCs. It looks very promising, and we’re excited to see if it lives up to the hype.

We expect Mobvoi to debut the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 in the TicWatch Pro 4. After all, it’s running the most powerful Snapdragon wearable SoC to date. And while we don’t know many of the smartwatch’s specs, leaks indicate that it offers Google Pay support, offers new AFiB detection, and has an IP68 dust and water-resistance rating.

The Mobvoi TicWatch 4 Pro should launch in late 2022 or early 2023. For what it’s worth, the previous TicWatch 3 Pro launched in September of 2020.

Source: Mobvoi