According to a new report, Qualcomm has a new Snapdragon chip in the works for Wear OS smartwatches, and it sounds like a pretty big upgrade.

Qualcomm has released several chipsets for Wear OS smartwatches over the years, but with some major gaps in performance and timing. The Snapdragon W5 series released in 2022 was a massive and overdue leap forward, but Qualcomm has been silent in regards to its successor for quite a while now.

Some details of the next Snapdragon chip for Wear OS, presumably either “W5 Gen 2” or “W6 Gen 1,” have now come to light.

Android Authority, citing “credible evidence,” says that Qualcomm has been working on a new Snapdragon chip for Wear OS that makes several key changes. The first of those is a move from a Samsung process for production over to TSMC, a move which, in itself, should improve battery life. Similarly, updated DDR5 memory should provide a very slight boost in efficiency. A much bigger source of improvement comes in the cores themselves. The alleged 1x Arm Cortex-A78 + 4x Arm Cortex-A55 configuration replaces some cores that were based on designs introduced over a decade ago, though these new cores still aren’t the newest ones available.

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While it’s unclear when this chip might debut, just knowing that it’s in the pipeline is good news. The existing Snapdragon W5 series provides Wear OS smartwatches based on the chip with plenty-good battery life and performance, but it’s certainly enticing to see that things could get a lot better. The report suggests that the chip is not yet in production, so we won’t be seeing its debut any time soon, meaning Google’s upcoming Pixel Watch 4 will probably be based on the existing Snapdragon W5.

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