Qualcomm to finally release a proper processor upgrade for their smartwatches

Qualcomm’s last smartwatch processor upgrade was at best a sideways move, with a focus on increased battery life, but no significant performance improvements; but now, watches powered by their processors are about to get a whole lot more powerful.

Just as anticipated, according to WinFuture, the company are starting to adapt their smartphone chip designs into their smartwatches.  The Snapdragon Wear 429 and Snapdragon Wear 2700 are expected to be 64bit, with ARM Cortex-A53 cores; which will be a huge improvement on the 2013 32-bit predecessor SoCs, which have ARM Cortex-A7 cores.

The platforms currently being tested each has 1 GB of LPDDR3-based memory, combined with 8 GB of internal EMMC flash memory.  Greater energy efficiency is achieved as a result of the 12 nm reduction in width, thus allowing for a higher clock rate.

Bluetooth 5.0 Faster Flash memory has been made possible due to the EMMC 5.1 support.  An LTE modem is also included with both of the aforementioned smartwatches.

It is speculated that Qualcomm is also further developing their energy-saving “helper” chips, which were previously used in the Snapdragon Wear 3100.  This low power processor takes over when the user isn’t actively looking at their watch, and only steps are being recorded.

The timeline for the release of the Snapdragon Wear-SoC is unclear, but it is expected to be ready for release sometime next year.  It’s certainly disappointing news for those of us who are looking to upgrade in the near future.

Source: WinFuture