After almost a year of waiting, Samsung executive vice president Patrick Chomet finally announced the long-awaited feature of Google Assistant, which is scheduled to arrive this summer. Chomet writes that Google Assistant on Wear OS 3 will enable “faster and more natural voice interactions” as well as the ability to look up quick answers while on the go. He also noted that it would be possible to control Spotify with Google Assistant on the watch. As per The Verge, a big reason why Samsung opted to work with Google to create a unified Wear OS 3 platform was the Google Play Store. Samsung’s smartwatches had historically been a way for it to push its ecosystem of products and services, including its voice assistant Bixby. The promise of Wear OS 3 was that Android users would get a greater say in which apps and assistants they could use. Apart from announcing the Pixel Watch, it is also noted that other Google services would also arrive on the Wear OS platform, which includes Google Home and Google Wallet. Although the exact date of its arrival is not known yet, it is speculated that the Google Assistant would arrive toward summer’s end.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+ is said to be announced next week
Qualcomm, the global innovator in wireless technology, introduced Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 at the end of last year. It turned out to be the company’s best performing mobile platform to date. Up until now, almost all major smartphone companies have launched their flagship models with this integrated chip. Since the start of this month, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+, an upgraded version of Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, has now appeared in a series of rumours. According to GSM Arena, it is reported that the launch is taking place next Friday on May 20. In addition to the flagship chipset, Qualcomm is expected to launch its Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 chipset.
If the rumours are true, there might be a larger number of announcements from smartphone manufacturers confirming new devices with the latest Qualcomm chipsets. The new SD 8 Gen 1+ (codenamed SM8475) is expected to source from TSMC unlike the current SD 8 Gen 1 from Samsung. The main difference between the two chipsets may be in the GPU division, which improves the performance of new chips, GSM Arena reports. The CPU is expected to remain unchanged from SD 8 Gen1 with 3GHz Cortex X2, 3 Cortex A710 power units and 4 Cortex A510 cores for efficiency. Interestingly, Motorola is expected to be one of the first manufacturers to use the new chip in their Edge X30 phones.
