It had been a while since Qualcomm did not have any new smartwatch processors. During this year there have been rumors for some time that spoke of top-of-the-range SoCs for wearable devices but until now they were only rumors. Yesterday, the US company announced Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 e W5 + Gen 1, two new top-of-the-range SoCs for super smart watches. Let's see the characteristics of each one.
Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 and W5 + Gen 1 are the company's new top-of-the-range smartwatch processors. Here are all the details of each SoC
Qualcomm simultaneously introduced two new mobile platforms for wearable devices: Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 and its Plus version. Designed for the next generation of smartwatches with WearOS 3, significantly exceed the company's previous solutions in terms of processing power and energy efficiency. The chip maker claims that the key improvements of the new SoCs over their predecessors are significantly improved performance e reduced energy consumption.
During the presentation, the features of the only Plus version of the 4nm mobile platform with four Cortex-A53 cores were unveiled. This is equipped with a coprocessor Cortex-M55 (22 nm, 250 MHz) and Adreno 702 graphics at 1 GHz and supports up to 16 GB of LPDDR4-2133 RAM. Compared to the Snapdragon Wear 4100+ model, Qualcomm claims the new chip has become twice as productive, while its energy efficiency is one and a half times higher. Among the salient features are the support a Bluetooth 5.3, Wi-Fi, GNSS, in addition to hibernation and "deep sleep" modes to perform background activities by the coprocessor without compromising the autonomy of the smartwatch.
Specifications for the Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 base chip will be announced at a later date. The company is already working with various partners to implement the SoC in smartwatches. The first smartwatches based on the new platform are expected to be presented by brands Oppo (the launch of the Watch 3 model in August) e Mobvoi (the launch of the next TicWatch is expected in the fall of 2022).
