This article is more than 1 year old

Samsung puts eight-core processor IN A WATCH

Brain the size of a planet and you ask me to tell the time

The chip which powers the Galaxy S6 is finding its way into Samsung’s next watch. It’s an eight-core beastie, with four cores running at 2.1GHz and four at 1.5GHz, with an ARM Mali T760 GPU.

The Exynos 7420 is a high-performance processor and it seems a little bit over-the-top for a device which has telling the time as its main function. Well, quite a lot over-the-top, actually.

Stepping up from the two cores in current Sammy watches to eight is a big jump. Yet it is rumoured to be the processor in a leaked watch codenamed Orbis.

The 14nm implementation of the Exynos 7420 is low power and clever code spread across the cores can reduce the heat produced. Samsung fan site SamMobile believes that it’s destined for Orbis, which appeared in a patent application showing the use of a rotating bezel as a control.

This would make it round-faced, unlike Samsung’s other watch offerings, but akin to the much-admired Moto 360.

The main reason for this choice is not CPU grunt, but power efficiency. The installation would improve battery life from the 1-2 days of rival (cough, Apple) smart watches to 3-4 days, but it still trails the E-ink Pebble's endurance of around a week, that of a quartz watch which will last five years or a mechanical self-winder which never needs to be charged at all.

Given the processor’s support for 16MP 30fps cameras, it would be a waste if the watch didn’t also have a camera. Samsung’s current watch portfolio runs on Tizen and SamMobile expects that Orbis will be no different. ®

More about

More about

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like