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Qualcomm’s long-awaited replace to its smartwatch SoC line is official. These chips have sometimes been known as “Snapdragon Put on,” but it surely feels like that model is useless, so it is time to meet the “Qualcomm Snapdragon W5+ Gen1” and “Snapdragon W5 Gen1.” Qualcomm guarantees that the chips present the corporate’s “most superior leap but,” which isn’t saying a lot for an organization that beforehand went six years between main smartwatch chip releases.
The W5+ does look like a significant replace, although. In comparison with 2020’s Put on 4100, Qualcomm is promising “2X efficiency throughout CPU, GPU, digital camera, reminiscence, and video/audio,” “50 p.c longer battery life” offering “days of use,” and a “30 p.c smaller” chip for sleeker designs.
In contrast to the Put on 4100 at its time of launch, the W5 is constructed on a state-of-the-art 4 nm manufacturing course of. Qualcomm outfitted the chip with 4 ARM Cortex A53 CPUs operating at as much as 1.7 GHz and an Adreno A702 GPU. The “plus” model features a second 22 nm SOC primarily based on the Cortex M55 for screen-off background processes, like protecting the watch face up to date, staying on high of notifications, and monitoring health stats. Qualcomm guarantees low-power islands for Wi-Fi, GPS, and audio in order that these options can be utilized with out lighting up the entire chip. The SoC has assist for an LTE modem, Wi-Fi 802.11n (aka Wi-Fi 4), and Bluetooth 5.3
It is onerous to know the place the W5+ will sit within the Android smartwatch chip hierarchy. Its competitors, the Samsung Exynos W920, has two A55 cores constructed on a 5 nm course of. Qualcomm has the method node benefit, however Samsung is utilizing newer cores, and Qualcomm is utilizing 4 cores in comparison with Samsung’s two. We’d like somebody to run Geekbench on each watches, but it surely feels like the 2 chips will cut up single-thread and multi-thread victories. On the very least, the Qualcomm chip is aggressive, hopefully marking a brand new period of the corporate taking the smartwatch market extra severely.
Qualcomm says it already has spherical and sq. watch reference designs from ODMs Compal and Pegatron able to go for companions. That will probably be useful for almost all of Put on OS producers, who’re principally simply vogue manufacturers that want a variety of third-party assist. Should you do not make your personal chips or have Google’s seemingly exclusive cope with Samsung, Qualcomm is the one recreation on the town for smartwatch chips, so the corporate says companions have 25 designs within the pipeline already. Oppo and Mobvoi (the makers of TicWatch) are the primary out of the gate and will have new watches with the chips out this fall.
Itemizing picture by Qualcomm
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