Google’s Pixel smartwatch is one of the most anticipated devices on the horizon despite not being a confirmed product, and a new report makes us even more eager to see what’s coming.
The rumoured Pixel Watch will apparently be powered by a Samsung Exynos chip and support Google Assistant, according to a report from 9to5Google that claims to have found a “PIXEL_EXPERIENCE_WATCH” feature tag within a Google app.
As the site notes, previous Pixel phones contained similar feature tags that told apps when to provide Pixel-exclusive features. If the forthcoming smartwatch does indeed have its own feature tag, it would suggest that it will receive features you can’t find on other watches.
Hold on, though, because it only gets better from here. The folks at 9to5Google also found references to “Rohan,” the codename linked to the Pixel Watch, and tied them to the next-generation Assistant, or the most recent version of the Google Assistant that debuted in the Pixel 4. The advantage of using the next-gen assistant is that speech can be processed directly on your device in real time, allowing you to quickly open apps, translate speech into text, or perform various functions offline.
As it stands, the latest version of Google’s watch OS, Wear OS 3, is still missing an assistant altogether (the poor Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 relies on Bixby).
Between finding a feature tag containing “PIXEL” and spotting what has been, to this point, a Pixel-exclusive feature, 9to5Google seems pretty convinced that Google’s next watch will indeed be called the Pixel Watch (as has been rumoured). This comes just a few weeks after a Business Insider report said it was “unclear” what brand Google would use if it even decides to release the watch.
And while there remains a sliver of doubt as to whether this thing will ever arrive, we have a pretty good idea of how it’ll look if it does. Again, 9to5Google did some digging, but this time, it looked through the Wear OS 3 emulator and found a watch face that seems to give us a glimpse at the Pixel Watch’s design.
One graphic it found shows a round watch face with a prominent crown. On the display is a curved light bar in Google colours (red, yellow, green, blue). While we don’t know for sure, this very much looks like the sort of icon that would appear when you summon the Google Assistant.
It’s worth pointing out that the image found in the emulator looks like the generic watch icon Google used in its Wear OS 3 announcement, and the addition of a pusher button deviates from the leaks we’ve seen thus far.
If those weren’t enough juicy Pixel Watch leaks, we get one more courtesy of 9to5Google, which claims to have “seen evidence suggesting” the Pixel Watch will be powered by a Samsung Exynos processor instead of Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon Wear 4100 Plus chip. Google and Samsung worked together on Wear OS 3 so it’d make sense for them to share hardware.
It’s possible Google’s upcoming watch will be powered by the same Samsung Exynos W920 found in the Galaxy Watch 4, but like everything else in this latest rumour batch, we can’t say for sure until Google confirms this thing is real.