Galaxy Watch 9 is ‘Powered by Snapdragon Wear Elite,’ leaked images confirm [Gallery]

Leaked images confirm Samsung's Galaxy Watch 9 will use Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear Elite chipset, marking a departure from its long-standing Exynos processors. The 3nm chip promises faster performance and enhanced AI capabilities, with the smartwatch expected to launch alongside Samsung's new foldables next week.

As expected, Samsung is switching its new Galaxy Watch 9 over to a Qualcomm chip, the Snapdragon Wear Elite, as some new images confirm. Qualcomm announced Snapdragon Wear Elite as its latest smartwatch chipset earlier this year, https://9to5google.com/2026/03/01/qualcomm-snapdragon-wear-elite/ with the 3nm chip promising faster overall performance and a ton of additional power for AI tasks. It was also teased that Samsung would be adopting the chip. That’s big news, as the Galaxy Watch series has exclusively used Exynos chipsets over the years, which was actually to their benefit during the several-year-run where Qualcomm’s chips were, underwhelming , we’ll say. The only question left was whether Samsung would ditch Exynos altogether. It seems the answer is yes. Evan Blass poked out of retirement again through his “Leakmail” newsletter https://evleaks.substack.com/ , with a batch of images including one that explicitly shows the Galaxy Watch 9 – not the Ultra 2 – as “Powered by Snapdragon Wear Elite.” Again, it’s not a surprise, but it’s nice to see. As for what Samsung might do with the added horsepower, we’ll have to wait and see… Galaxy Watch 9 drops next week alongside Samsung’s new foldables. More on Samsung: Marketing images of Galaxy Z Fold 8 photos leak right before Galaxy Unpacked Gallery https://9to5google.com/2026/07/17/galaxy-z-fold-8-flip-images-leak-before-launch/ Samsung’s plans for free storage upgrades become clearer as Galaxy Z Fold 8 nears launch https://9to5google.com/2026/07/17/samsung-galaxy-z-fold-8-free-storage-upgrade/ Samsung Health won’t delete all of your data if you opt out of AI training after all https://9to5google.com/2026/07/15/samsung-health-ai-training-data-consent/ Follow Ben: Twitter/X https://twitter.com/NexusBen , Threads https://www.threads.net/@nexusben , Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/nexusben.com , and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/nexusben FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More. https://9to5mac.com/about/ affiliate our homepage http://9to5google.com/ for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Google on exclusive stories https://9to5google.com/feature/exclusive/ , reviews https://9to5google.com/guides/reviews/ , how-tos https://9to5google.com/guides/how-to/ , and subscribe to our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/9to5google