A leaked render of the upcoming TicWatch Pro from Mobvoi’s smart series teases a design that’s simpler than its predecessor — and appears to be heavily inspired by the Google Pixel Watch.
We were really impressed with the TicWatch Pro 3; It’s currently one of the best Wear OS smartwatches on the market that boasts a long battery life (three days) and a slew of useful features at a fairly budget-friendly price. Mobvoi’s upcoming TicWatch Pro 5 is expected to take things up a notch with a more capable Snapdragon W5 Plus processor and Wear OS 3 software, which should give this device enhanced power and functionality.
Now we may have got our first look at what the wearable will look like Kuba Wojciechowski (Opens in a new tab) A developer shares leaks on Twitter revealing a render that he says is for the TicWatch Pro 5.
Mobvoi’s upcoming smartwatch shares a lot of similarities with the TicWatch Pro 3, but most notably it will drop the double crown design in favor of a simpler, single crown control – just like the Google Pixel Watch. On top of that, the numbers around the watch face have been stripped in favor of a textured bezel which once again helps make the device look less busy than iterations that came before.
⌚️ Leak: Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 – One of the first watches to ship with Snapdragon W5 (+) and Wear OS 3 pic.twitter.com/FIg8BEcMQRJanuary 20, 2023
As for why the new smartwatch is expected to be called the TicWatch Pro 5 instead of the TicWatch Pro 4, Wojciechowski explained that it’s most likely due to quadruphobia.
Mobvoi is a Beijing-based technology company and in some Asian languages — including many variants of Chinese — the word four and the word for death sound very similar. For this reason, some companies choose to avoid using the number four in product names and when placing labels on floors in buildings—much like how some companies avoid using 13 in similar ways.
We should always treat leaks with a pinch of salt, but Wojciechowski has been a fairly stalwart source of tech leaks in the past, so it’s worth paying attention to what he has to say. This is especially true here as the leaked design matches the official silhouette shared by Mobvoi.
For now, this is just a design leak. Besides the promise of a new chip and a new operating system, there is nothing else about what this device can do nor its price or release date. We hope it has the same battery life and affordability as its predecessor, but we’ll have to wait and see if this streamlined smartwatch has what it takes to dethrone the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro from the top spot in our Wear OS smartwatch ranking. .
If you’re interested in other tech leaks, check out this report that Google is working on its own version of Apple AirTags, codenamed Grogu – the cute Yoda-like alien that will launch in The Mandalorian Season 3.