Samsung's 5nm Exynos W920 Chip Will Power Galaxy Watch 4 To Wear OS 3.0 Glory
This is big news for smartwatch users, as Qualcomm has been stagnant on the performance and efficiency front with its Snapdragon Wear 3100 SoC and seems reticent to improve the situation (although the company iterates at an incredible pace with its smartphone SoCs). While the Exynos W920 uses the latest and greatest 5nm technology, the Snapdragon Wear 3100 is based on the now ancient 28nm process node.
The Exynos W920 should blow the Snapdragon Wear 3100 and previous Exynos SoCs out of the water when it comes to performance. Samsung claims that the new chip offers a 20 percent performance boost over its predecessor and a 10x uplift in graphics performance thanks to dual Arm Cortex-A55 CPU cores and a Mali-G68 GPU.
While the added performance is a nice plus, the power efficiency gains when using the smaller 5nm process node should also be readily apparent to users. A System-in-Package-embedded Package on Package (SiP-ePoP) configuration incorporates the Exynos W920, power management IC, eMMC, and LPDDR4 onto a single package. This reduced footprint also means that a larger battery can be used within the casing. A more efficient SoC plus a larger battery could explain why we've heard rumors that the Galaxy Watch 4 family could last up to a week per charge, which blows the best-selling Apple Watch out of the water (rated for 18 hours).
According to Samsung, the Exynos W920 can be paired with displays with a resolution of up to 960x540. In addition, a Cortex-M55 co-processor can push content to the always-on display without accessing the more power-hungry Cortex-A55 cores.
If the rumors are accurate, both the Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 4 Classic will launch tomorrow (August 11th) at a virtual Galaxy Unpacked event. These will be the first devices to leverage the new Wear OS 3.0 operating system, incorporating some of the best technological features of Samsung's Tizen OS.
