Even if they may not be much faster than what we have now
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 4100 chipset represented a massive upgrade over its predecessor, and the series arrived as the SoC bump Google’s Wear OS desperately needed. But almost two years after launch, it’s high time to be thinking about a refresh. A new report suggests that Qualcomm’s indeed working on something, detailing what we might hope to expect from the Snapdragon Wear 5100 and 5100+.
We picked up some early rumors about Qualcomm’s next-gen Snapdragon Wear chips back in September of last year, but there hasn’t been a lot of chatter in the months since. Now we’re finally starting to get some new info, as WinFuture reports that the Qualcomm is currently testing its SW5100 and 5100+ chipsets. Both are reportedly built on Samsung’s 4nm process, and should be markedly more efficient than their 12nm predecessors. Fabrication aside, it doesn’t sound like the CPU is getting a lot of attention here, and Qualcomm’s reportedly sticking with the same 1.7GHz ARM Cortex-A53 cores it used in the Wear 4100 and 4100+.
The GPU, on the other hand, will improve dramatically — for as much as that matters on a wearable. Qualcomm is expected to use a 700MHz Adreno 720, which would be a big step up from the 320MHz Adreno 504 in the two-year-old 4100 series. Things are also looking good in the RAM and storage departments, as faster LPDDR4X RAM and eMMC 5.1 flash memory are supposedly on the way. Speaking of RAM, both chips will support up to 4GB, with Qualcomm already running tests on 2 and 4GB variants.
Smartwatches pretty much abandoned the idea of trying to cram in cameras years ago, but if any upcoming models are so bold as to be thinking about revisiting the idea, the Wear 5100 and 5100+ should have them covered. The chips will have an integrated image processor supporting up to two cameras with 13 and 16 MP maximum resolutions. If manufacturers take advantage of this feature, we might even get smartwatches that record 1080P video and perform video calls.
The difference between the Wear 5100 and 5100+ chipsets is in primarily in the packaging, though that caries with it some broader consequences. The plus model, like its predecessor, will be more compact and have support for an ultra-low-power mode, thanks to the presence of a QCC5100 coprocessor. That would allow it to perform certain tasks (including communication and even driving the screen) without using the main chip.
For now, it’s still unclear when Qualcomm will announce the Wear 5100 or Wear 5100+ or when they might start appearing in commercial devices.
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