Two years have passed since wearable technology fans gathered to welcome the successors to the Wear 4100 and 4100+. Qualcomm announced its new SoCs for connected watches late yesterday.Two smartwatches made by OPPO and Mobvoi should start should take advantage of this new chipset
With the venerable Wear 2100, Qualcomm released its first SoC for a wearable back in 2016. Following then, multiple models were released about every two years, one after the other. The Wear 4100 and 4100+, the founder’s last processors, were released in 2020.
On paper, the Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 and W5 + Gen 1 unquestionably give us tremendous promises: they provide 50% more battery Life, twice the performance, and a 30% smaller footprint than the Wear 4100+.
The primary CPU has four ARM Cortex A53 cores and is etched in a 4 nm process. A secondary unit is etched in a 22 nm process and has a low-power M55 core that is Bluetooth 5.3 compliant.
The idea is the same as on the Wear 4100/4100+, with the exception that low consumption is now much more of a focus. Several islands are made to control audio, Wi-Fi, and GPS with the least amount of battery drain possible.
In order to maximize the amount of time between recharges, the SoCs may also enter deep sleep and hibernation phases. In an effort to compete with the Apple Watch Series 7, the Always On mode seems to have also undergone improvements.In the concept, only the most demanding tasks—like viewing movies, placing hands-free calls, or utilizing the voice assistant—are performed on the main CPU
Qualcomm claims that a watch with a 600 mAh battery is capable of keeping the charge for up to 72 hours while the Always On option is used. It should come as no surprise that Qualcomm’s latest CPUs will work well with Google’s wristwatch software. However, alternative RTOS-like systems will be able to operate on the Snapdragon W5+.
By the end of the year, other manufacturers are anticipated to join the dance since Qualcomm has already shown no less than 25 upcoming smartphones, whose designs were created by ODMs Compal and Pegatron.