A leaked render for Mobvoi’s next TicWatch Pro series smartwatch teases a simpler design than its predecessor – and one that looks 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 boasting a long (three-day) battery life and a slew of useful features at a fairly budget-friendly price. And Mobvoi’s next TicWatch Pro 5 device is expected to take things up a level with a more capable Snapdragon W5 Plus processor and Wear OS 3 software, which should give this device a power and functionality boost.
Now we might have gotten our first look at what the wearable will look like, with Kuba Wojciechowski (opens in new tab) – a developer who shares leaks on Twitter – revealing a render that he says is of the TicWatch Pro 5.
Mobvoi’s upcoming smartwatch shares a lot of similarities with the TicWatch Pro 3, but most notably it will seemingly drop the dual-crown design in favor of a simpler single-crown control – just like the Google Pixel Watch. What’s more, the numbers surrounding the watch face have been stripped away in favor of a textured rim which again helps to make the gadget look less busy than iterations that have come 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 tetraphobia.
Mobvoi is a Beijing-based tech company and in some Asian languages – including several varieties of Chinese – the word for four and the word for death sound pretty similar. Because of this, some companies choose to avoid using the number four in product names and when labeling floors in buildings – much like how some businesses avoid using 13 in similar ways.
We should always take leaks with a pinch of salt, but Wojciechowski has been a fairly solid source for tech leaks in the past, so it’s worth paying attention to what he has to say. That’s especially true here as the leaked design does match an official silhouette shared by Mobvoi.
For now, this is only a design leak. Beyond the promise of a new chipset and OS, there’s little else on what this device is capable of nor a price tag or when it'll release. Hopefully, it’ll boast the same battery life and affordability as its predecessor but we’ll have to wait and see if this simplified smartwatch has what it takes to knock the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro off 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, which use the codename Grogu – the cute Yoda-like alien that’ll star in The Mandalorian Season 3.
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