They will focus on two areas where wearables, smartwatches in particular, have sorely needed some upgrades. Namely battery life and better performance. Qualcomm is calling these new platforms its most advanced leap yet. Stating that with them on board, smartwatches can offer increased performance by up to two times that of the currently available platform. The Snapdragon Wear 4100+. The key improvements are exactly what Google has been promising since it announced Wear OS 3. Better performance and better battery life. And now it seems Qualcomm is prepared to help further that goal.
The Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 will offer 50% lower power on wearables
Battery life on some smartwatches has been a common issue for years. And while this mostly pertains to Wear OS, all smartwatches could certainly benefit from a bump. Qualcomm says the new Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 can offer two times the battery life. Though your milage may vary once these hit the market, Qualcomm gave some rough figures as examples. For typical DoU scenarios, Qualcomm says a watch battery that would last up to 28 hours on the Snapdragon Wear 4100+ could now last up to 43 hours. This is based on a Bluetooth-connected smartwatch with a 300mAh battery. Watches with a 4G connection and a 450mAh battery that would last up to 36 hours could now last up to 54. And a 4G-conneted sports watch with a 600mAh battery that could last up to 48 hours could now last up to 72. Again these are estimates based on testing and not necessarily what the user would get. But they’re big increases nonetheless. Qualcomm also boasts “2x higher performance, 2x richer features,” in addition to a platform that has “a 30% smaller size compared to the previous generation platform.”
There are already device designs in the pipeline
It might be a little while before we see these watches become available. But Qualcomm is already working with partners on upcoming smartwatches and wearables sporting this new platform. The company says that there are already 25 designs in the pipeline across segments. And it’s been working with its first two partners, Oppo and Mobvoi, for the past year. Oppo in fact, is expected to launch the Oppo Watch 3 Series in August. Making it the first set of watches running on the Snapdragon W5 wearable platform.
