Huawei revealed a gorgeous watch at MWC, LG revealed two models, Xiaomi is rumoured to be working on a design of its own, so where is Samsung, a pioneer in the smartwatch space?
Long story short – Samsung needs a bit more time to put all the pieces of the puzzle in place, but we'll get to that later.
Gear didn’t work out
Samsung has a habit of launching numerous products that probably wouldn’t leave the drawing board at companies like Apple or HTC. Samsung simply launches a lot of gadgets and hopes some of them will take off.
Galaxy Note phablets were one such success story, but Galaxy Gear watches were not, despite the fact that the company launched a number of different models, on different platforms.
The latest round of rumours comes from a number of sources. Sammobile talked about the innovative design of the Orbis smartwatch, which is expected to be the company’s first round smartwatch, with a rotary bezel on top for easier navigation.
Since then, some schematics have emerged, which seem to confirm the original leak. Nice scoop on Sammobile's part.
No, Samsung is not using the Exynos 7420 in a watch
However, for some reason a number of big gadget sites are now carrying reports out of Korea, suggesting that Samsung would use its flagship Exynos 7420 SoC in this particular product.
It won’t.
We don’t think we even need to explain why, since our readers know a thing or two about chips. Using the fastest (and probably most expensive) SoC out there in smartwatch makes no sense whatsoever – and Samsung didn’t become the biggest player in the Android space by being downright stupid.
While Samsung sometimes seem to be all over the place, launching dozens of new products a month, experimenting with new concepts and probing new markets, when it comes to business, the company is actually quite sensible.
Debunking rumours lost in translation
However, that does not apply to some sensationalist blog editors out there, most of whom cited the same sources – dt.co.kr and Tizen Indonesia.
We have no problem with the sources, in fact we suggest you check them out, but we do have a problem with how the reports were interpreted. Neither of them claims that Samsung will use the Exynos 7420 in its upcoming smartwatch. Dt.co.kr simply mentioned the efficiency gains provided by the 14nm 7420 over the 5433, and that’s about it.
What the site did say, and what qualifies as big news, is that Samsung would use 14nm silicon in the smartwatch, which also explains why Samsung didn’t launch any new smartwatches at MWC. The company is most likely working on fresh 14nm silicon suitable for smartwatches, which should give it a substantial advantage in terms of battery life. Coupled with Samsung’s frugal AMOLED display technology, the Samsung Orbis (or whatever it ends up being called), should be able to outlive the competition like a Duracell bunny.
For some reason, many tech blogs seem to believe the Exynos 7420 is the only 14nm SoC out there, and the company has no choice but to put it in a smartwatch. However, it has come to our attention that the Exynos 7420 is actually designed and built by Samsung, in its own fabs, which also produce loads of other chips, including the Apple S1 SiP used in the Apple Watch.
Samsung’s new watch is supposedly coming in September, which gives the company plenty of time to create a 14nm solution in a similar package. There is no need to use Google Translate and rummage through Korean sites to figure this out – using common sense should suffice. If someone does not understand why the Exynos 7420 isn’t a good solution for a smartwatch, that person has no place editing a tech news site. [Good, let the hate flow through you. Ed]
