Qualcomm unveiled its next-generation smartwatch platform, Snapdragon Wear 3100, which is set to power new devices from companies including Fossil Group, Louis Vuitton and Montblanc.

The platform includes a new ultra-low power system architecture, designed to improve battery life when not being used for “smart” functions, alongside usability enhancements to its smartwatch features. It comes as Google continues to enhance its Wear OS platform, with the search giant supporting Qualcomm’s launch.

With “big/small” architectures a familiar way of balancing performance and power requirements, Snapdragon Wear 3100 adopts a “big/small/tiny” design using an ultra-low power coprocessor running a real-time operating system for when the smartwatch is not in heavy use.

At a pre-launch event, Pankaj Kedia, senior director of product marketing for smart wearables at Qualcomm (pictured, above), said: “How do most of us use our wrist device? You know, 5 per cent of our time I’m actively interacting with it. But actually most of the time, I’m not: it’s just sitting there,” he said. So most of the time, the key is “super low power”.

Power shift
This new coprocessor enables an enhanced “ambient mode”, so devices look more appealing on the wrist, offloading display processing from the A7 “big” chip. There is also a traditional watch mode, so smartwatches can still be used in low power states. This is said to deliver one week of use with 20 per cent battery capacity, enabling customers to keep using devices until they reach a charger.

The coprocessor integrates a deep learning engine for custom features, such as keyword detection.

Kedia noted initially smartwatches came from phone vendors, which was followed by watch companies and fashion players. With Snapdragon Wear 3100, “you will see more phone companies, more watch companies, but maybe what is most exciting, is many sports companies jumping in,” he said.

Supporting this is the ability to offer 15 hours of GPS and heart rate sensing, compared with just three hours in earlier devices. This is enabled by the ultra-low power coprocessor in conjunction with the DSP.

While Qualcomm’s earlier Snapdragon Wear 2100 platform has been around for a while, Kedia noted the company recently launched a platform specifically targeting the “kid watch” segment, in the shape of Snapdragon Wear 2500 (with Huawei as a named customer). It also offers two platforms targeting trackers.

Snapdragon Wear 3100 comes in three flavours: Bluetooth and Wi-Fi “tethered” smartwatches; GPS-based tethered smartwatches; and 4G LTE-connected smartwatches.

The silicon is in production, and shipping today.