While Apple has released more powerful chipsets for its smartwatches over the years, Wear OS has not made any real progress in the smartwatch space. Qualcomm’s processors had low performance and low power efficiency, smart watches did not meet expectations. Samsung changed that when it released the Galaxy Watch 4 model with the Exynos W920 processor.
Competing with Samsung
It seems that Qualcomm has finally made the decision to release a modern chip for smartwatches. The company shared a short promotional video for its new smartwatch processor yesterday. The smartwatch emoji and something big in the tweet indicate that Qualcomm will launch a high-end smartwatch processor with a modern manufacturing process.
It is known that Qualcomm will release two new processors (Snapdragon Wear 5100 and Snapdragon Wear 5100 Plus) for wearable devices that will go through Samsung Foundry’s 4nm manufacturing process.
4nm manufacturing process claim
The Samsung Exynos W920, used in the Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 4 Classic models, is a processor that goes through Samsung Foundry’s 5nm manufacturing process. For comparison, Apple’s S7 chip goes through TSMC’s 7nm manufacturing process, while Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 4100+ goes through the 12nm manufacturing process. If the future Snapdragon chip is truly to be produced on a 4nm process, we’re sure to see much faster performance and longer battery life than current Wear OS smartwatches.
Thanks to the Exynos W920 and Qualcomm’s soon-to-be-introduced chipset, we can see significant improvements in the Wear OS smartwatch area. Additionally, Google’s collaboration with Samsung for Wear OS 3 has resulted in better integration between Android-based phones, tablets and even Chromebooks.