Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 reportedly switching to Snapdragon Wear Elite, Watch 9 staying put

Samsung is expected to unveil its Galaxy Watch 9 and the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 sometime this summer. While there is no exact release date, they are said to launch alongside the Galaxy Z Fold 8. Not a lot is known about the wearables but a new leak hints at the chip strategy that Samsung is going for, and it comes as good news those looking at the Ultra 2.

Qualcomm recently introduced the Snapdragon Wear Elite at MWC and it’s the first personal AI-focused wearable platform. It features the company’s Hexagon NPU to enable high-performance AI processing directly on the device. This processor could show up in the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, while the Galaxy Watch 9 sticks with the Exynos W1000. The information comes from leaker Jason C on X who claims that this dual-chip strategy is to separate the premium and the standard models.

The leaker states that Samsung is testing the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 with the Snapdragon Wear Elite SoC. They also state that the Galaxy Watch 9 will be powered by the “Exynos W10” but that’s most likely the W1000, the same SoC as the original Galaxy Watch Ultra (buy on Amazon) and Galaxy Watch 8 (buy the Classic on Amazon) models. The W1000 is a powerful wearable SoC and it outperforms the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 2. It would be interesting to see how it stacks against the Snapdragon Wear Elite.

Of course, this split processor approach for the upcoming Galaxy smartwatch models is speculation at this point. The only other piece of information that came out was the model numbers associated with them. The Galaxy Watch 9 is said to carry model number SM-L345 while the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 is said to be SM-L716.