The Pixel Watch 2, which looks identical to the Pixel Watch 1. (credit: Google)
The Pixel Watch 2 is launching alongside the Pixel 8 today. Google’s second self-branded smartwatch is sporting a modest update, with the same design as the first version, a new SoC, and a skin temperature sensor.
As previously reported, the Pixel Watch 2 is jumping from the Exynos SoC of the first watch to Team Qualcomm, and now this is shipping the Qualcomm Snapdragon W5+. That’s sort of an upgrade but not a huge one. Both the new and old chips run four Cortex A53 CPUs—the Exynos 9110 in the Pixel Watch 1 was built on a 10 nm while this is taking a big jump to 4nm. Any CPU upgrade is nice, but the Cortex A53 is 11 years old, so it still feels like Qualcomm is building these things in a cave.
The Qualcomm chip should bring a better modem if you’re getting the LTE version, which is still $400, while the Wi-Fi only is $350. The rest of the spec sheet is mostly the same: 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, and IP68 dust and water resistance.
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