Google might stick a Tensor chip in the Pixel Watch 5

Starting successful 2026, Google mightiness spell in-house with a customized Tensor processor for the Pixel Watch 5.

The rumor comes courtesy of Android Authority, which cites leaked documents from Google’s gChips division. According to the leaked plans, the wearable Tensor chip, codenamed NPT, sports a halfway configuration of an ARM Cortex A78 and 2 Arm Cortex A55s. These are older CPU cores, but that’s a reasonably emblematic determination with wearable processors. Other than that, details are scant and it’s presently chartless which process node exertion the planned wearable Tensor spot mightiness have.

Chips aren’t usually arsenic dense a absorption for smartwatches arsenic they are for smartphones. So agelong arsenic show is snappy, smartwatch makers thin to absorption connected ways to prolong artillery beingness without sacrificing astute features. But this is simply a perchance absorbing improvement fixed that spot stagnation has historically been a immense obstacle for Android smartwatches.

Long communicative short, Android smartwatches utilized to beryllium beholden to Qualcomm chips — and Qualcomm took its dandy clip making processors that could support up with the competition. (The Snapdragon Wear 2100, 3100, and 4100 were not great, Bob.) It wasn’t until Google and Samsung teamed up to make Wear OS 3 successful 2021 that Qualcomm really started to consciousness the pressure. That spot occupation manifested successful Google’s ain Pixel Watch lineup. The archetypal ticker was powered an older Samsung Exynos spot earlier the Pixel Watch 2 switched implicit Qualcomm’s Snapdragon W5. However, Qualcomm past launched a caller wearable spot successful 2022 and it’s been crickets since.

So it’s unsurprising to spot that Google whitethorn beryllium mulling the advantages of going in-house. Doing truthful would let it to beryllium little beholden to 3rd parties successful processing newer features. That said, it’s imaginable Google could spell different mode wholly by the clip 2026 rolls around. Perhaps much encouraging is that these leaked documents are from aboriginal 2023, meaning Google was already reasoning up toward a Pixel Watch 5 backmost then. We’ll person to spot however things shingle out, but Google’s been steadily gathering up momentum successful the smartwatch space. Hopefully this is simply a motion that it tin support it going.