Qualcomm officially : Qualcomm has reportedly launched the latest technology from Snapdragon which will be paired into wearables. This technology is presented in the form of a chipset called Snapdragon Wear 5 Gen 1 and Snapdragon Wear 5 Plus Gen 1.
The Wear 5 Plus chipset is designed to be present in a wide range of premium smartwatches. The Wear 5 chip is meant for simpler wearables, such as smartwatches for kids, fitness trackers and enterprise devices.
“Both chips are made specifically for wearables,” said Pankaj Kedia, Global Head of Qualcomm Smart Wearables.
In terms of specifications, Qualcomm retains the hybrid architecture featured in the Snapdragon Wear 3100 and 4100 chips. On these chipsets, there is a main processor for various interactive tasks and a coprocessor to help conserve battery life.
Qualcomm officially On the W5 Plus chipset, Qualcomm made a big jump on the size of their chipset. This can be seen from 12nm to 4nm on the main chip and 28nm to 22nm on the auxiliary processor. Through this, it seems that the company is trying to present process technology that is compatible with the chipsets of wearable devices from other manufacturers. For example, the Samsung Exynos W920 which uses 5nm process technology to support the Galaxy Watch 4 and Apple’s S7 chip for the 7nm Apple Watch Series 7.
Furthermore, coprocessors or auxiliary processors on the Wear 5 Plus will be tasked with supporting features previously handled by the main SoC. This includes audio, keyword detection for the digital assistant, and notifications via low-power Bluetooth 5.3.
“Coprocessors can also support onboard machine learning,”
Meanwhile, health tracking features such as sleep and heart rate monitoring are also handled by the coprocessor. So the main processor is only used for interactive features such as dialing, clock display and 3D animation and GPS navigation.
For the battery, Qualcomm claims, this chipset can make the battery life 50 percent longer with twice the performance. In addition, Qualcomm will also provide a size reduction of up to 30 percent compared to the 4100 chipset.
Kedia also said the greater power efficiency and smaller chip size would allow manufacturers to build smaller, slimmer watches. If that’s true, The Verge says, it will be big news for people with smaller wrists. The reason is, the size of the smartwatch is slowly increasing to be bigger with the inclusion of various advanced features. For example, the larger size of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro has now been confirmed by Samsung.
The first product that will use the Snapdragon Wear 5 chipset is the Oppo Watch 3 which will be launched in August. Meanwhile, Mobvoi will present Wear 5 Plus on the next TiWatch which will launch in the fall of 2022.
