Eric Zeman/Android Authority
TL; PhD
- Qualcomm seems to be preparing a new Snapdragon Wear chipset.
- It is believed that the chipset is called Snapdragon Wear 5100.
- There is evidence that it is based on an 11nm process with a quad-core design.
New evidence indicates that the next-generation Qualcomm smartwatch chipset is under development and may carry the Snapdragon Wear 5100 title.
XDA-Developer I recently sorted out the new code published to the Qualcomm Code Aurora development wiki, and found some interesting details in the process.
The specific code branch labeled “LAW.UM.2.0-00700-SW5100.0” provides two interesting pieces of information.First, the “Law” in the title may point to “Linux Android Wear”, according to SuntecSecondly, “SW5100” may be a condensed version of the nickname of Snapdragon Wear 5100. In summary, this shows that the new code is related to Qualcomm’s new smart watch chip.
Suntec Evidence was also found that the platform can be based on an 11nm process with four Arm Cortex-A73 cores. Compared with the mix of four old Cortex-A53 cores based on the Snapdragon Wear 4100 based on the 12nm process, this will be a significant efficiency and power improvement, and is a further improvement to the 28nm design of the Wear 3100.
Snapdragon Wear 5100: When will it launch?
There is no official indication as to whether or when Qualcomm will launch a new chipset. If it will come soon, this will be a significant strategic change for the company. Before the debut of Snapdragon Wear 4100 last year, there was a gap of nearly two years between the releases of Qualcomm’s wearable chipset. Wearable chips have never been Qualcomm’s top priority.
Few wearable devices currently run the Snapdragon Wear 4100 chipset as is. Like Ticwatch E3, the watch using it has proven to have excellent battery life and good performance. Several devices on this platform will also be upgraded to Wear OS 3 in the next few months, so OEMs have no economic incentive to adopt the new chipset. For Qualcomm, the focus is still on the smartphone chipset.
But considering the new efforts of Google and Samsung on Wear OS, now may be a good time to launch a new, faster, and more efficient Snapdragon chipset.