Qualcomm’s new processor promises thinner, longer lasting smartwatches

Mobile devices, be they phones or tablets, are no longer topping out with 1080p displays-many go well beyond and the industry is responding with higher quality video feeds. The DSP drives a low power sensor hub said to use 80 percent less power than the Snapdragon 400. “With Snapdragon Wear’s new platform, it’s clear that AT&T and Qualcomm Technologies share a vision for independently connected wearables that create a seamless experience for those who wear them”.

However, the new Snapdragon Wear platform marks a more concerted effort to dominate the wearables space.

The SoC itself is 30% smaller.

The Snapdragon Wear 2100 comes with an integrated, ultra-low power sensor that helps developers and smartwatch makers enable new algorithms. The new processor also uses 25% less power, which should boost battery life.

The new chips will be part of a new processor lineup that include the premium Snapdragon 820, which is expected to be in many smartphones announced at Mobile World Congress later this month.

As the name suggests, the Snapdragon Wear 2100 is the next-generation processor for Android Wear watches. The Snapdragon Wear 2100 is available to OEMs today, but there’s no word on when it will be in consumer products.

The Snapdragon 625 is a 14-nanometer, eight-core ARM-based processor that offers a 35 percent reduction in power consumption compared to the last generation.

With the massive surge smartphone adoption in developing countries, Qualcomm is looking to capitalize on further growth with the release of these three processors, all rocking the ARM Cortex-A53 CPU.

The X16 is also the first to support LTE Advanced Pro, the next generation of LTE. The chips, however include enhanced imaging capabilities, which can enable the use of up to 24-megapixel cameras. The dual ISPs are much better at capturing high-quality footage in low-light conditions. Although it’s not uncommon to see modems built on state-of-the-art process nodes it is interesting to see Qualcomm offering 14nm products so early in the life span of the node. The Snapdragon 435 is essentially the same as the Snapdragon 430, which was announced in September with the Snapdragon 617, but with the LTE modem upgraded from X6 to a Category 7 level X8. It uses carrier-aggregation just like the Snapdragon X10, using three 20MHz carriers but capturing up to 10 streams of LTE data this time around with four antennas.

Next up is Qualcomm’s gigabit-class LTE modem for mobile devices: the X16.

What makes the X16 tick?