The next TicWatch Pro smartwatch borrows its design from the Google Pixel Watch

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 very impressed with the TicWatch Pro 3; it’s one of the best Wear OS smartwatches on the market right now with a long battery life (three days) 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 to the next level with a more powerful Snapdragon W5 Plus processor and Wear OS 3 software, which should give this device a power and functionality boost.

Now we may have gotten our first look at what the wearable will look like, with Kuba Wojciechowski (opens in new tab) – a developer sharing leaks on Twitter – revealing a rendering he claims is of the TicWatch Pro 5.

Mobvoi’s upcoming smartwatch shares a lot of similarities with the TicWatch Pro 3, but most notably the dual-crown design seems to be disappearing in favor of simpler single-crown operation – much like the Google Pixel Watch. Additionally, the numbers around the watch face have been dropped in favor of a textured bezel, again helping to make the gadget look less busy than previous iterations.

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 technology company, and in some Asian languages ​​— including several varieties of Chinese — the word for four and the word for dead sound quite similar. That’s why some companies choose not to use the number four in product names and when labeling floors in buildings – just as some companies avoid using 13 in similar ways.

We should always take leaks with a grain of salt, but Wojciechowski has been a pretty 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 matches an official silhouette shared by Mobvoi.

For now, this is just a design flaw. Aside from the promise of a new chipset and operating system, there’s little else about what this device is capable of, either a price tag or when it will be released. Hopefully it’ll have 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, codenamed Grogu – the adorable Yoda-like alien who will star in Season 3 of The Mandalorian.