As expected, Qualcomm today took the wraps off of a new processor aimed at smartwatches.
The Snapdragon Wear 3100 includes a new ultra low power system architecture to help extend battery life. The architecture includes quad-core A7 processor, an integrated DSP that Qualcomm says is "highly efficient", and a new ultra low power QCC1110 co-processor that's been designed from the ground up.
Also included with the Snapdragon Wear 3100 is a new wearable power management subsystem, known as PMW3100, which supports lower power and higher integration. There's a 4G LTE modem in there, too.
Qualcomm has included three "personalized experiences" with the Snapdragon Wear 3100 to help Wear OS smartwatches powered by the chipset meet users' needs. An Enhanced Ambient Mode offers features like a smooth second hand, live complications, up to 16 colors, and adaptive brightness; the Dedicated Sports Experiences will get you extended battery life, even with GPS and active heart rate monitoring; and a Traditional Watch Mode uses the new ultra low power co-processor to let you use your watch with a custom face for up to a week.
Finally, Qualcomm is focusing on the techniques it uses with the Snapdragon Wear 3100 to help smartwatches get better battery life. These techniques were made with features like GPS, clock updates, sensor processing, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth voice queries, and MP3 playback. These improvements can help to improve battery life anywhere between 4 and 12 hours compared to the Snapdragon Wear 2100.
The first partners that've signed on to offer Snapdragon Wear 3100-powered smartwatches include Fossil, Louis Vuitton, and Montblanc. These devices are expected to begin rolling out in Q4 2018.
The Snapdragon Wear 3100 sounds like a major improvement for Wear OS smartwatches. When it comes to wearables, battery life is one of the most important features for many people, and so it's good that Qualcomm is working to make better battery life a major focus of the Snapdragon Wear 3100. Now we just have to wait for the first watches to launch so we can see just what kind of battery life the Snapdragon Wear 3100 can offer in the real world.
