The Google Pixel Watch is rumored to have a circular, all-glass design

For the last eight years, Google has been developing a wristwatch platform, but it has never seen fit to back it with Google-branded hardware. That may change in the future, and the whispers are heating up this year more than ever. The Pixel Watch might be on its way.

The newest information comes from renowned leaker Evan Blass, who has obtained an official render of the watch body. Blass' revelation corresponds to prior Front Page Tech pictures. The Pixel Watch was also expected to come in the spring, according to an Insider story from late last year, and 9to5Google. Google just noticed that the Google Store now features a "Watches" section. It appears that we will learn more about this watch at Google I/O 2022.

We don't know much about the watch other than the fact that it's codenamed "Rohan" and will come with Google's latest Wear OS version. The absence of a good wristwatch SoC has been a devastating problem for Wear OS over the years, so whichever processor ends up in the Pixel Watch will be big news. Apple has an in-house chip design team that can consistently enhance the Apple Watch's battery life and computing power year after year. Qualcomm hasn't valued the smartwatch industry and has spent years offering the same basic processor to OEMs with no performance improvements, which is one of the reasons Wear OS can't compete.

While Google is working on a new version of Wear OS, Samsung's major contribution was the Galaxy Watch 4, which included a capable, contemporary 5 nm wristwatch SoC. The Google Tensor SoC in the Pixel 6 was also developed in collaboration with Samsung. Will the Pixel Watch have a Samsung processor, given the two firms' recent collaboration? That would be a significant victory for the platform.

Qualcomm is another possibility. The Snapdragon Wear 4100, a 12 nm processor from 2020, is Qualcomm's current smartwatch chip. The business is working on a "Wear 5100" watch that will be released later this year, but with a recent WinFuture story indicating that the chip was transitioning from 5 nm to 4 nm, it appears that it will be a few months before it is ready for market. Google has a history of unveiling products at I/O that aren't released for months, so it might cope with this by stating that the watch would be released "later this year" with no exact date.

The Pixel wristwatch has been rumored since the Pixel brand was launched in 2016. Part of the reason it's taken so long to get a Google watch is that the company has supposedly tried and failed previously. According to a 2019 Insider report, Google was developing a Pixel Watch to coincide with the first phone, but Google Hardware SVP Rick Osterloh turned the idea down. These watches were the LG Watch Style and LG Watch Sport, as everyone knows. Both were released in 2017 with a dubious phrase on the box—"Designed with our pals at Google"—that may have been read as "This is a canceled Pixel Watch.

According to an unidentified employee quoted in the Insider piece, these watches didn't make the cut because of the following reasons:

The looks of the gadgets were a big consideration for Osterloh when deciding whether or not to launch the pair of LG-made smartwatches.

"It didn't appear like it belonged in the Pixel family," remarked one of the project's former employees. "We didn't want a peripheral product to tarnish the Google hardware brand's reputation." 

The LG Watch Style and LG Watch Sport were deemed too ugly to be Pixel devices in that paragraph, so it's intriguing to see the recent leaks resemble a more contemporary version of the LG Watch Style design.

Google I/O is shaping up to be a fascinating event, as it often is. On May 11, there will be a virtual event where we may learn more about this watch.

Read More: Two new Macs, including a new Air, may be unveiled at WWDC

source: arstechnica