The Galaxy Watch 8 will launch soon, as early as the new Fold 7 and Flip 7 event, which is mostly in July 2025. As per the leaks, key information about the chipset and design is out. Samsung is reportedly sticking with the Exynos W1000 chipset for the Galaxy Watch 8 series. The performance of the chip is very impressive, and it’s also incredibly efficient.
It’s still one of the fastest smartwatch chips. It was introduced last year, and these are the specs:
- Penta-core CPU with one Cortex-A78 core clocked at 1.6 GHz
- Four Cortex-A55 cores at 1.5 GHz
- Mali-G68 MP2 GPU
- LPDDR5 RAM
It uses the 3nm GAA process, which is good at both performance and efficiency while remaining cool. Cost is another reason to reuse this chipset. Since it’s not a new chipset, the prices will fall, and the company can increase its profits. A year later, the Exynos W1000 is still better than the Snapdragon counterparts, which is impressive. If Samsung brings the 3nm GAA processing to its smartphone chips, the company can seriously compete with Qualcomm.
Since Samsung didn’t bother updating the chip, we can assume the company is fairly confident in its capabilities. However, the software still needs improvements. There’s a lot of power, but many users still report lag and frame drops in the animations.
The chipset aside, the Galaxy Watch 8 series will apparently bring back the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic model. There’s a new Squircle case design, which is similar to the Galaxy Watch Ultra. As per reports, both the Watch 8 and Watch 8 Classic will feature a similar look, which is a mix of both the circle and square shapes. The reaction to this has been divisive, since the design is very polarizing.
The company also designed the new One UI for Watch software around the Squircle UI, which is probably not the most efficient use of space. These are the leaked design specs of the Galaxy Watch 8:
- Available in 46/ 47mm sizes
- 1.5″ diagonal AMOLED screen (60Hz)
- 46mm x 46.5mm x 14.2mm dimensions
- 450mAh battery
- One UI 8 for Watch (built on Wear OS 6)
One UI 8 for Watch features some new features as well. As per a teardown of a system app, it reveals that Samsung is working on bringing the Now Bar to the Galaxy Watches. Now Bar displays key information like the weather and summarizes it in the form of cards. As per the same teardown, Samsung might also add new fitness and health features, such as the antioxidant index feature.
