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Qualcomm is looking to take its Snapdragon Wear chipset to a higher level while replacing the current Wear 4100 platform. Built on the 4nm process node, the Snapdragon Wear 5100 and 5100+ are both expected to improve the performance of Google’s wearable operating system thanks to the manufacturing process being used.
Two new Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear chips are rumored to be on the way
Renders of the Google Pixel Watch
The “Plus” chip also will include technology from ARM that supports heart rate and fall detection and will deliver improved haptics. Both variants include four Cortex-A53 cores running at a clock speed of 1.7GHz. In addition, both chips will feature the Adreno 702 GPU running at 700MHz.
The Snapdragon Wear 5100 and 5100+ will both support up to 4GB of LPDDR4X RAM and eMMC 5.1 storage. This happens to be the same core as the Wear 4100+ although it would seem that Qualcomm is counting on the reduced process node to cover some of the improvements found in the newer chips.
The 5100+ will include the QCC5100 co-processor which adds a 22nm Cortex-M55 ultra-low-power processor to help reduce the consumption of battery power. Speaking of which, it seems that the move to use a 4nm process node to build the two variants is a recent change from the 5nm that Samsung was going to use to produce the silicon.
The new chips might not be used on the rumored Pixel Watch
Time to pick up the Galaxy Watch 4 or the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic
The device will reportedly be equipped with the capability to allow Google Assistant to process speech on-device. Not only can this speed up the time it takes for the digital helper to respond to queries, it also could allow users to speak to the Assistant even when offline.
Google might want to keep the Tensor branding on the chips that power its devices in order to give the public a certain expectation about the AI features that will be available on its products and to present a certain aura of premium quality.
