If the rumors are true, Google’s upcoming Pixel Watch will be a flagship set to compete with Samsung’s latest Galaxy Watches and the Apple Watch, according to new specs leaked by 9to5Google. According to 9to5’s report, you’ll be able to get a cellular version of the wearable, and it will have a 300 milliamp-hour (mAh) battery.
It wasn’t necessarily a given that there would be a cellular option for the Pixel Watch. According to The Verge, some lower-end smartwatches, and even some high-end fitness-focused models, are reliant on your phone for connectivity. If the rumor is accurate and there is a cellular Pixel Watch model, it reinforces the idea that Google’s probably not trying to make its watch a smaller or cheaper alternative — it wants that mass-market appeal.
As for the battery, its physical capacity seems about right for how big the watch is. However, it’s almost impossible to tell what that milliamp-hour rating means for how long it’ll last between charges. But what really matters when it comes to a wearable’s battery life are its features and processor. Both are unknown at this point for the Pixel Watch, though features-wise it obviously won’t have the e-paper display that let the Pebble Time get well over a week of use out of its 250mAh battery.
As The Verge reports, a big, as-of-yet unanswered question is which chip Google will use — Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 4100 or 4100 Plus, which haven’t shown up in a lot of watches despite having been around for a while? A currently unannounced next-gen Qualcomm chip? Samsung’s Exynos chips that it uses in its own watches? A custom Tensor processor, like Google uses in the Pixel 6? There are so many options — some of which are unknowns, and others that would be a bad sign for its battery life.
Hopefully, we won’t have to wait too long to find out the answer — the rumors say that Google could announce the Pixel Watch at its I/O conference, which starts on May 11th. If you want to get a look at its hardware before then, though, you’re in luck — someone posted a plethora of pictures of it on and off a wrist, claiming that a friend found the device laying around in a bar, iPhone 4-style. Maybe Sundar Pichai will make the same joke as Steve Jobs when he announces the Pixel Watch, saying “stop me if you’ve already seen this.”
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