What you need to know
- Samsung will allegedly switch to a 3nm chip for the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7, a first for the company.
- The current Galaxy Watch 6 switched to a 5nm Exynos chip with modest performance gains over the last generation.
- The Galaxy S24 will use 4nm Snapdragon and Exynos chips.
Samsung plans to use a brand new 3-nanometer Exynos chip for the Galaxy Watch 7 next summer, according to a recent report. And aside from performance improvements, we're intrigued to see whether it'll help the next-gen watch regain its footing as a battery-life leader.
Samsung used the same 10nm Exynos 9110 SoC for the Galaxy Watch 1, 2, and 3, then the upgraded 5nm Exynos W920 for the Galaxy Watch 4 and 5, and finally, a boosted 5nm W930 chip in the Galaxy Watch 6 with an 18% clock boost and 25% loading time increase over the W920.
We fully expected the Galaxy Watch 7 to keep the W930, based on this pattern. Instead, according to a source for Korean outlet New Daily (via SamMobile), Samsung will switch to the unnamed 3nm Exynos chip — possibly called the W940 if the current naming pattern holds.
New Daily claims this chip "improves power consumption by 50%, performance by more than 30%, and reduces area by 35%," compared to 5nm chips like the W930.
There's no guarantee that Samsung's watch chip would hit those idealized numbers; still, this has us excited for a Galaxy Watch 7 that lasts longer than Samsung's typical 40-hour watch lifespan, and measures thinner than its current (chunky) 12mm design as well.
We heard last year that Samsung was having trouble delivering high yield of 3nm chips. This report makes note of this, while adding that "confidence in mass production [of 3nm chips] has increased in terms of production cost and price competitiveness," putting Samsung ahead of its own projected schedule.
We've recently heard that the international Samsung Galaxy S24 would use a 4nm Exynos 2400 chip, matching the 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 announced this week. This will make the Galaxy Watch 7 a useful test run for Samsung with 3nm tech, presumably before it switches to next-gen silicon for its Galaxy S25 phones.
Even though the Galaxy Watch 6 tops our list for the best Android watches, rivals like the Pixel Watch 2 and TicWatch Pro 5 closed the gap on the strength of their 4nm Snapdragon W5 chips, which deliver impressive performance and solid battery life. It's clear that Samsung feels pressured enough by the competition that it can't rest on its Exynos laurels for another generation, as it typically does.
