Series 5 Apple Watch shares the same processor as Series 4.

Good news for Series 4 users!

Apple Watch Series 5

An updated processor is apparently not among the list of differences the Apple Watch Series 4 and 5 shares.

Prominent developer Steve Troughton Smith has discovered the Apple Watch Series 5 sports the same processor as introduced in last year’s watch. He pointed this out in one of his Twitter revelations. According to him, the Apple Watch Series 5 has the same generation processor and GPU as the Series 4.

This bit of information was found in the latest version of Xcode. And it’s not very surprising considering previous leaks and Apple’s development cycle trends. Leaks portrayed the Series 5 as a minor upgrade with little improvements here and there. Everyone, before the Apple event, had only correctly anticipated the Apple Watch might be offered in a new Titanium finish. Nothing above that was clear.

Therefore, a skipped processor upgrade wasn’t surprising, just unprecedented and unconventional. On top of that, Series 5 has apparently stunned people by introducing the first-ever always-on display on an Apple Watch along with a gyroscopic sensor used for the compass.

Apple also didn’t mention any speed bump or indicate any processor improvements over the Series 4 in the keynote or on Apple’s website. According to Apple’s website, however, the Series 5 Apple Watch has a “64-bit dual-core S5 processor” that is “up to 2x faster than the S3 processor.” The S3 processor is the one used in the Series 3 watches which are currently being sold at a fairly inexpensive rate of $200; the S4 is the one used in the Series 4 Apple Watch and is equally competent as the S5 chip. The S5 chip, after all, denotes an entire SoC (System on Chip) that houses the new display controller and a built-in compass.

An interesting fact: The Apple Watch Series 4 and 5 sport a whopping 1 GB of RAM, according to Smith. One gigabyte of RAM isn’t a number to be excited about, but considering the fact that it’s present in a device that you wear on your wrist as a watch is quite baffling.

This is good news for Apple Watch Series 4 users since they get an additional year of unchallenged performance. Now, you may feel the need to upgrade only if you’d want to check the time in a manner that is a little more socially adequate.

Apple Watch Series 5 is available for $399 for the GPS-only model. The LTE model starts at $499.