Eric Zeman / Android Authority
TL; DR
- Further details on Qualcomm’s alleged Snapdragon Wear 5100 smartwatch chipset have been leaked.
- The SoC is said to keep the quad-core A53 design of its predecessor, but upgraded to LPDDR4X RAM.
- For the more adventurous OEMs, the chipset could also offer dual camera support for wearables.
News that Qualcomm was working on a possible new portable chipset broke coverage for the first time last month. Those first reports pointed to the rumored Snapdragon Wear 5100 name of the chipset and offered some general design details. Now a new report provides more information on these results.
Corresponding WinFuture, the Snapdragon Wear 5100 uses a quad-core design, but sticks with the Arm Cortex-A53 CPUs used by the Snapdragon Wear 4100 series. First rumors indicated four A73 cores, which would lead to a significant increase in computing power. Still, Qualcomm prefers efficiency over absolute speed. Given the lackluster battery life of Wear OS smartwatches compared to their competitors, we’d appreciate the move.
Read more: Everything you need to know about smartphone chipsets
However, Qualcomm could see performance gains in other areas. A prototype reportedly uses 2GB of LPDDR4X RAM, which should improve both power consumption and bandwidth over the 4100 series LPDDR3 RAM. 16GB of eMMC storage is also provided, which would be a boon for offline music and app storage.
Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 5100: support for dual cameras?
Interestingly, some prototypes supposedly support dual cameras with 5MP and 16MP sensors in tow. We have seen cameras end up on some smartwatches in the past. Although the Snapdragon 4100 series supports 16 MP shooters, they haven’t made an impact on flagship wearables yet. In theory, cameras on smartwatches could be useful for authentication purposes or video calls on LTE watches, but there’s currently no evidence that a smartwatch manufacturer is considering either use.
Finally, the report suggests that Samsung and China’s SMIC are in the running to produce the chipset. However, it is unclear when production will start or when we will see the first wearables with the SoC. As it is, only a handful of devices use the Snapdragon Wear 4100 series silicon well after its launch in June 2020. However, a new chip could be vital for future Wear OS smartwatches to match Samsung’s Exynos-powered Galaxy Watch 4 series to keep up.
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