Qualcomm is working on a much better chipset for smartwatches
Interestingly, the new chip isn't based on any existing Qualcomm product, unlike all of its predecessors. The Snapdragon Wear W6 is bespoke for wearable platforms, and its CPU will have one Cortex-A78 core and four Cortex-A55 cores, alongside support for LPDDR5X RAM. It will be built by TSMC. Google's Pixel Watch 3 uses the SW5100
The W5 was unveiled in 2022, and so it's definitely high time for a replacement from Qualcomm. The W6 seems to focus on performance with switching from four Cortex-A53 cores in its predecessor to four Cortex-A55 and a Cortex-A78 big core. If that configuration seems familiar, it's because Samsung's Exynos W1000 also uses it.
It's unclear when Qualcomm will bring the new SoC to the market, but it might be announced in September at its annual Snapdragon summit, in which case we should see the first smartwatches using it appear in early 2026.
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