The Apple Watch Series 7 launch at Apple’s ‘California Streaming’ event was an odd one by the company’s standards. As multiple reports suggested, Apple has delayed the launch of the smartwatch due to production issues. The announcement from Apple also only talked about the design and was light on other key details of the wearable. As it turns out, the Apple Watch Series 7 features the same S6 chipset as the Apple Watch Series 6 from last year.

The S6 SoC features a dual-core processor that’s based on the A11 chip found inside older iPhones. When Apple announced the chip last year, it claimed it introduced a 20 percent performance boost.

As developer @Stroughtonsmith has revealed, the chipset is “the exact same” as last year’s model. In fact, Apple is not even using new model identifiers for the Apple Watch Series 7. Instead, it internally refers to them as “Watch6,6; Watch6,7; Watch6,8” etc.

There is a reason Apple didn’t talk about the Apple Watch Series 7 CPU this year…

…and it’s because it’s the exact same as last year’s Series 6 👀 In fact it doesn’t even get a new model number, it’s effectively just a chassis tweak pic.twitter.com/mLsTNkdTNO

— Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) September 15, 2021

This is not the first time that Apple has used the same S-chipset across two generations of Apple Watch though. Apple did this first with the Apple Watch Series 1 and Series 2, and then later with the Apple Watch Series 4 and Series 5.

Apple only highlighted the bigger design, bigger and brighter display, and design tweaks that the Apple Watch Series 7 brings to the table on the virtual stage. It did not talk about any other aspect of the smartwatch. Apple also did not shed much light on the availability of the Apple Watch Series 7 and just stated that it would be available later this fall.

It looks like just like the iPhone 13 series, the Apple Watch Series 7 is also more of an ‘s’ refresh this year.