Qualcomm Just Told Us the Chip in the Next Samsung Galaxy Watch

We have a new wearable chip for the next wave of smartwatches! Chipsets aren’t typically an exciting thing to talk about, but for so long we were stuck with aging tech in Wear OS devices. It always felt like new watches would come and go, yet they always ran on the same ancient platform and nothing new was ever really introduced. So yeah, hearing that Qualcomm has a new Snapdragon Wear Elite chip ready for the next round of Wear OS watches has captured my attention.

Today, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon Wear Elite chip and Samsung already promised to deliver it inside of their “next-generation Galaxy Watch” that should show up in the “next few months.”

Samsung has continued to release new Galaxy Watch models with each passing year, but they almost always run their own Exynos chips. Seeing the switch to Qualcomm could be telling, or is at least an acknowledgement that Qualcomm built a better chip this time around and they are willing to give 2026 to it.

This new Snapdragon Wear Elite chip will be pitched by Qualcomm as being big on AI. It has a Hexagon NPU and can do some on-device AI, with content-aware recommendations, natural voice interactions, life logging, and access to AI agents that can do stuff. These companies still can’t stop themselves from making everything about AI, so that’s the story here that they want you to know.

For other important upgrades, Qualcomm says this 3nm chip brings a “massive leap in power efficiency and unrivaled speed,” which is what we all truly care about. The Snapdragon Wear Elite shows a 5x improvement in single-core CPU performance and up to 7x faster GPU performance. We’re talking 30% longer “day of use” for the battery and rapid charging that does 50% in 10 minutes.

In connectivity, this thing supports 5G RedCap, which is like a simplified 5G solution for wearables that should bring better connectivity without the power drain. We’re finally moving away from LTE in smartwatches. We also get Bluetooth 6.0, UWB, satellite-based messaging, and faster WiFi 6.

Coming back to the Samsung side of this, here’s what they said for Qualcomm’s launch:

“Samsung and Qualcomm Technologies share a long history of advancing what’s possible in mobile computing, and we are thrilled to extend this partnership into the wearable category,” said InKang Song, Executive Vice President and Head of Technology Strategy Team, MX Business at Samsung Electronics. “By integrating the new Snapdragon Wear Elite platform, the next-generation Galaxy Watch will be an even more holistic wellness companion. This marks an important step in our ongoing efforts to deliver more efficient and personalized experiences, right from your wrist.”

Our next question is – what about the Pixel Watch 5?

// Qualcomm