Overview

• Qualcomm introduced W5 Gen 2 and W5+ Gen 2 with support for satellite messaging over NB-NTN starting with Skylo for off‑grid SOS and location sharing.
• The company says wearable satellite use is limited to two‑way texts and location transmission to preserve battery life, with no voice calling.
• Location Machine Learning 3.0 is claimed to boost GPS accuracy by up to 50% in challenging environments such as dense cities or deep canyons.
• The platform targets about 20% lower power use and a smaller RF front end while keeping the same 4nm process and 4x Cortex‑A53 cores, signaling no major CPU performance gain.
• Two versions are offered: W5+ Gen 2 with a low‑power M55 co‑processor and the standard W5 Gen 2 used in Pixel Watch 4, with support for Bluetooth 5.3 and the latest Wear OS.