Whereas Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Put on chips energy the overwhelming majority of present Put on OS watches, the platform itself has by no means actually delivered. To date, Snapdragon Put on chips have been repurposed cellular processor designs constructed on outdated tech and are an enormous motive why Wear OS watches have been so lackluster. However right this moment, Qualcomm is launching an overhauled wearables platform referred to as Snapdragon W5 Plus and W5. And this time, it looks like Qualcomm means enterprise.
For starters, the corporate is ditching the Snapdragon Put on branding. That may appear irrelevant, however it’s extra like a symbolic contemporary slate. As an alternative, the brand new W5 Plus and W5 chips will likely be folded beneath the primary Snapdragon umbrella. The W5 Plus is envisioned for premium smartwatches, whereas the W5 is supposed for easier units like smartwatches for teenagers, health trackers, and enterprise units. And, in line with Qualcomm’s world head of sensible wearables, Pankaj Kedia, each chips are particularly constructed for wearable units. As in, they’re not repurposed smartphone chips.
Spec-wise, the platform retains the hybrid structure featured within the Snapdragon Put on 3100 and 4100 chips. There’s the primary processor for interactive duties and an always-on coprocessor to assist preserve battery. For the W5 Plus, Qualcomm is making an enormous leap from 12nm to 4nm on the primary chip and from 28nm to 22nm on the coprocessor. For context, Samsung’s Exynos W920, which powers the Galaxy Watch 4, makes use of 5nm course of tech. Apple’s S7 chip for the Apple Watch Collection 7 makes use of a 7nm course of. This isn’t to say the W5 Plus is mechanically higher as a result of it’s on 4nm — it’s extra that Qualcomm is lastly utilizing present course of tech like its friends.
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Picture: Qualcomm
With the W5 Plus platform, the always-on coprocessor powers options that had been beforehand dealt with by the primary SoC. They embrace audio, key phrase detection for digital assistants, and notifications through low-power Bluetooth 5.3. In the meantime, well being monitoring options like monitoring sleep and coronary heart price are additionally dealt with by the coprocessor. Kedia says the coprocessor can even help onboard machine studying, although we’ll should see if and the way corporations make use of that.
Primarily, the primary processor is barely used for interactive options like calling, 3D watchfaces and animation, or GPS navigation. Qualcomm’s press launch says the result’s 50 p.c longer battery life, double the efficiency, and a 30 p.c discount in measurement in comparison with the 4100 platform. In response to Kedia, the W5 Plus platform ought to have the ability to ship multi-day battery life in some instances — which is one thing a Put on OS watch has but to realize. In a briefing, Kedia famous that Bluetooth watches with an always-on show sporting a 300mAh battery will see roughly 15 hours of further battery. As a result of these numbers are primarily based on Qualcomm’s personal inside analysis, it’s inconceivable to say simply but how that’ll translate to, say, an precise Fossil smartwatch.
Kedia additionally instructed The Verge that the higher energy effectivity and smaller chip measurement will allow producers to create smaller, sleeker watches. If true, that’s large information for people with smaller wrists. As corporations embrace extra superior options, in addition they are likely to add bigger batteries to compensate for the extra energy drain. Positive sufficient, smartwatch sizes have slowly however steadily elevated through the years. Working example, a bigger Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Professional is all but confirmed.
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Picture: Qualcomm
However maybe the most important change is there’ll hardly be a wait earlier than the primary Snapdragon W5-powered watches hit cabinets. Oppo says it’ll be the primary to launch a watch on the W5 platform with the Oppo Watch 3 in August. In the meantime, Mobvoi says its subsequent TicWatch will launch this fall with the W5 Plus chip.
That’s a significant shift from the previous. As an example, the Snapdragon Put on 3100 platform was introduced in 2018, however we didn’t see most wearable makers undertake the SoC till fall 2019. The wait was even worse with the Snapdragon Put on 4100 platform. That was introduced in summer time 2020, however solely two smartwatches featured it a 12 months after launch. Even now, there are solely a handful of 4100-powered smartwatches available on the market.
Put on OS 3 hasn’t had the smoothest start, and we nonetheless don’t have a real thought of the way it’ll run on a non-Samsung smartwatch. (The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 lineup is the one extensively obtainable Put on OS 3 smartwatch in the intervening time.) The primary non-Samsung smartwatch to run Put on OS 3 is the prohibitively expensive Montblanc Summit 3, however that simply launched and runs on a last-gen 4100 chip. In the meantime, it’s rumored the forthcoming Google Pixel Watch will likely be powered by an older Samsung chip. So actually, we gained’t understand how a Put on OS 3 watch powered by a present Qualcomm chip can carry out till Mobvoi’s W5 Plus-powered TicWatch arrives this fall.
The transition to Put on OS 3 was at all times going to be rocky, but it surely additionally seems just like the items could also be beginning to fall into place. Final 12 months, Samsung and Google started tackling the software program aspect of the equation by making a unified software program platform. Now, Qualcomm appears to be following up with next-gen {hardware}. Then once more, Qualcomm has didn’t ship earlier than. Nonetheless, between the large leap in course of tech, the rebrand, and shortened wait time to market — perhaps this time Qualcomm will lastly get it proper.
