Qualcomm's New Smartwatch

Qualcomm's New Smartwatch Chips Promise Big Battery Life Gains

Built on a 4-nanometer process, they're smaller, more efficient and ready to go inside the next Google Wear OS watches.

TIRED OF RECHARGING your  smartwatch every night? Qualcomm has a solution: a more efficient chip built specifically for smartwatches. If it sounds familiar, that's because Qualcomm has been releasing new smartwatch chips every two years with the same premise. But this year's processors - the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 and W5 Gen1 - just might be the biggest leaps to date.

The new chips, which are also being rebranded and ditching the previous "Snapdragon Wear" name, are built on a 4 - nanometer process. The last generation of Qualcomm's chip for wearables was built on a 12 - nanometer process. Processors are made up of transistors and the size of those transistors is measured in nanometers.

TINY CHIPS

                         

Going from a 12 - nanometer process to 4 - nanometers is startingly big jump. Apple hasn't shared the transistor size on its latest S7 chip powering the Apple Watch Series 7, but it's likely built on 7 - nanometer process, potentially making the new W5 chips some of the most efficient wearable processors in the market.

TICK TOCK

The big question is how well the W5+Gen 1 will work with Google's Wear Operating System. Many wear OS watches use Qualcomm's processors and those devices that have the Wear 4100 chip have yet to receieve the latest version of Google's wear OS.

                      The first smartwatch to use the W5+Gen 1 will be from chinese phone manufacturer Oppo, which will be launching the Oppo Watch 3 in August. Device maker MOBVOI will be releasing a new Tic Watch running Google's Wear OS powered by the W5+Gen 1 later this year.

                        In the first quarter of 2022, it shipped more than 8.5 million units, with samsung  in second at 3.2 million and Google in fifth at 6,07,000. Not only new smartwatches on the way with Qualcomm's chips, but Google is set to release a Pixel Watch later this year and Samsung is expected to announce a new Wear OS - powered Galaxy Watch in August.