Qualcomm's New Snapdragon Wear Chipset for Smartwatches Teased

Qualcomm has teased the next-generation of the Snapdragon Wear chipset for smartwatches on Twitter. The chipmaker, however, did not give out any information about the name of the SoC nor its USP. It is expected to follow Qualcomm's naming style and will be a successor to the Snapdragon Wear 4100+ chipset. The development comes about a month after the San Diego-based company revealed the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, an upgraded version of its flagship SoC, and the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 SoC — the successor to the Snapdragon 778G SoC.

Qualcomm made the announcement through the Snapdragon twitter handle that clearly shows a chipset and a smartwatch in a small video clip. The caption of the tweet reads “The clock is ticking on something big”, clearly suggesting a chipset for wearables. The upcoming wearables chipset name and feature are not known yet, but it may be called Snapdragon Wear 5100 Platform — the next in line as per Qualcomm's naming scheme. The company also hasn't revealed any information about its partners that will be using this platform.

Qualcomm's last offering — the Snapdragon Wear 4100+ — was launched in 2020. It was claimed to deliver 85 percent higher performance compared to the Snapdragon Wear 3100 platform and reduce power consumption. Qualcomm says that the chipset utilises the 12nm low power process technology to deliver up to 25 percent extended battery life. It came with AON co-processor that offers support for up to 64K colours, continuous heart rate monitoring, faster tilt-to-wake responsiveness, steps, alarms, timers, and haptics.

Earlier this year, Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC — an upgrade to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 platform — and the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 SoC as successor to the Snapdragon 778G SoC. The Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is claimed to deliver up to 10 percent faster CPU performance and 30 percent improved power efficiency over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. The Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 is touted to offer 20 percent faster graphics rendering over its predecessor.