Qualcomm introduces Snapdragon Wear 3100
THE Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 will bring flavour into Wear OS smartwatches, thanks to its three innovative modes that were designed to maximise battery life.
The Snapdragon Wear 3100, which features four A7 CPUS, a digital signal processor, and an ultra-low power coprocessor, will be the successor of the Wear 2100. Qualcomm mentioned that the first watches with a Wear 3100 chip will be distributed before the end of the year.
Pankaj Kedia, the leader of Qualcomm’s wearable department, said that the Snapdragon Wear 3100 will be featuring popular functions such as telling time, GPS tracking and a music player. It added that the Snapdragon Wear 3100 will likewise come with a 15-hour heart-rate tracking capability.
“The 95 per cent of the time when you’re not actually interacting with [your watch], you are in ambient mode or always-sensing mode. So the co-processor, that’s where you are 95 per cent of the time... we are doing less and less things in the main [processor],” Kedia revealed.
While it is built with a co-processor, The Verge noted that both Snapdragon Wear 2100 and 3100 share the same main processor, which means that the latter won’t likely come with major speed gains. Nonetheless, the Snapdragon Wear 3100 will also exhibit an integrated NFC feature and a 4G connectivity.
Meanwhile, the “traditional watch mode” component will allow devices to last one week, with just a 20-per cent charge. In addition, 9to5 Google projected that the Snapdragon Wear 3100 should have an extended four to 12 hours of enhanced battery life in normal usage compared to its predecessor.
Other than the traditional watch mode, the Snapdragon Wear 3100 will also be mobilised with an “Enhanced Ambient Mode”, which has the potentiality to enable users to initiate always-on watch face for live updating complications and adaptive brightness. Qualcomm added that the modern co-processor of the Snapdragon Wear 3100 is capable of animating a watch’s second hand with 20 times less power.
On a related news, Montblanc has also revealed that its Summit 2 will be the first smartwatch that will feature a Snapdragon Wear 3100 chip. Gizmodo reports that the Summit 2 will likely cost around $900 and should be released sometime in October. Just last year, Montblanc unwrapped a Wear OS device.
Apart from Montblanc, renowned companies such as Louis Vuitton and the Fossil Group will also release Snapdragon Wear 3100 models. On the other hand, Google will be a no-show this year after stating that it won’t release of the rumoured Pixel Watch.