Qualcomm slaps satellite on new smartwatch chip
by Nick Farrell on21 August 2025
Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 adds safety tricks but not much grunt
Qualcomm has refreshed its smartwatch silicon after three years, but anyone hoping for a serious performance leap will have to keep waiting.
The new Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 and W5+ Gen 2 look a lot like their predecessors from 2022, except now they can talk to satellites. That means if you get lost up a mountain or bust your ankle in the woods, your watch can still send emergency messages via Narrowband Non-Terrestrial Network. Qualcomm’s first partner here is Skylo, which handles the backend.
The other notable upgrade is in positioning. Qualcomm’s so-called Location Machine Learning 3.0 supposedly improves GPS accuracy by up to 50 per cent, even in concrete canyons or deep valleys where previous watches tended to go cross-eyed.
The RF front end has been shrunk by about 20 per cent, which should cut power draw and free up a bit of space in already-cramped wearables. The company is, unsurprisingly, waving the Wear OS flag as well.
Under the hood, though, things are much the same. It is still built on the 4nm process and still uses four Cortex-A53 cores. The ‘+’ model adds a co-processor, but otherwise this is Qualcomm reheating old soup.
Google has already bagged bragging rights by slotting the vanilla W5 Gen 2 into the upcoming Pixel Watch 4, bolting on its own custom hardware to make up the difference.
Google Wearables senior director of product management Sandeep Waraich was wheeled out to say: “We’re excited to have the Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 powering the new Google Pixel Watch 4, delivering high performance, delightful experiences, and potentially life-saving capabilities.”
That may be overselling things a touch, but Google will at least get to claim the first smartwatch with emergency satellite comms. As for raw horsepower, Qualcomm clearly thinks wrist chips don’t need the same yearly upgrades as phones, so smartwatch owners are left waiting for real performance improvements.
fudzilla.com |
