14 DAY TRIAL // Apple launched the Apple Watch Series 5 last week with much fanfare, but one thing that few people actually noticed is that the company barely talked about the hardware and the performance figures of this new model.
And as it turns out, there’s good reason for this, as the Series 5 doesn’t come with anything too exciting when it comes to the hardware under the hood.
A discovery made by developed Steve Troughton-Smith in Xcode indicates that Apple’s new Apple Watch Series 5 comes with the same chip as the Apple Watch Series 4. In other words, the performance should be pretty much the same given the same-generation CPU and GPU are used, which makes some people wonder if buying the new model is really worth it.
Always-on screen
The rock star on the new Apple Watch Series 5 is without a doubt the always-on display, but for many, not delivering better performance than last year’s model is reason enough to stick with the Series 4.
“According to Xcode, Apple Watch Series 5 has the same generation CPU/GPU as the Apple Watch Series 4; I guess the only changes are a gyro and 32GB of NAND? The plus side of that is that we won't have to worry about watchOS being slower on the Series 4 than on a brand new model,” Steve Troughton-Smith says on Twitter.
Meanwhile, Apple has remained completely tight-lipped on everything related to the hardware used inside the new Apple Watch, and the company bets big on the said always-on screen feature.
Always-on allows the Apple Watch to display essential data on the screen, like the current time, without the need for rotating the wrist and activating the entire display. The feature has been around for a long time on non-Apple smartwatches, and it’s seen as one very effective way to save battery on a day-to-day use.