The Apple Watch Series 11, Apple Watch SE 3, and Apple Watch Ultra 3 are expected to released this month; however, we shouldn’t expect any major performance improvements over the Apple Watch Series 10 (S10) and Apple Watch Ultra 2 (S9). Keep in mind that a system-in-package (SiP) and system on a chip (SoC) are two different things; in other words, a newer SiP does not always mean newer CPU cores for faster performance. A newer SiP may continue to use the same CPU cores as the previous generation, but it may add other components like improved wireless technology.
Apple unintentionally leaked some internal information about the updated S11 SiP: apparently, that SiP continues to use the same T8310 architecture that features two “Sawtooth” performance cores that are also found in the A16 chip. The previous S9 and S10 SiP’s in the Series 9 and Series 10, respectively, have used the same T8310 architecture, so that’s why we didn’t see any performance gains from the Series 9 to the Series 10.
Apple has been using the same CPU technology across a few generations of SiP’s. The S6, S7, and S8 all used the same architecture that was based on the A13 Bionic chip by featuring two efficiency “Thunder” cores. These SiPs were used on the following Apple Watch models:
- S6: Apple Watch Series 6, Apple Watch SE
- S7: Apple Watch Series 7
- S8: Apple Watch Series 8, Apple Watch SE 2, Apple Watch Ultra
It seems like every three years, Apple would upgrade the performance of Apple Watch models, so when Apple introduces the S12 SiP next fall, Apple could boast performance improvements for future Apple Watch models. Speaking of this, several codenames for those models were revealed, and those were expected to be announced over the course of next year:
- N227: Apple Watch Series 11
- N228: Apple Watch Series 11 (Cellular)
- N230: Apple Watch Ultra 3
- N237: Apple Watch Series 12
- N238: Apple Watch Series 12 (Cellular)
- N240: Apple Watch Ultra 4
We expect Apple to announce the next lineup of Apple Watches along with the iPhone 17 series on September 9.
