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Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear
Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear
Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear
innovations, wearables have quietly been doing great. IDC projects the shipment
of wearable devices to double by 2021, and by 2022, smartwatches are projected
to account for 40% of all shipments of wearable devices. Much of the growth is
thanks to the success of the Apple Watch brand even though the number of
smartwatches running the Wear OS platform continues to grow. Wear OS
smartwatches just don’t offer the kind of battery life you’ll get from
smartwatches running Apple’s watchOS or Samsung’s Tizen OS, and that’s
because Wear OS smartwatches have mostly been using the old Qualcomm
Snapdragon Wear 2100 platform. Today, the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100
platform has been announced, and the many improvements in Qualcomm’s latest
wearable platform are poised to bring great battery life to upcoming Wear OS
smartwatches.
How the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 Brings Better Battery Life to
Smartwatches
The prevailing thought for years was to treat smartwatches like miniature
smartphones. That hasn’t been working out, however, as few users actually
actively engage with their smartwatches for extended periods of time. Whereas
one might spend hours a day on their smartphone, users spend far less time
using their smartwatch. Qualcomm found that their Snapdragon Wear 2100’s
application processor was being used 5% of the time while the remaining 95% of
the time the smartwatch is idle. Thus, Qualcomm focused much of their efforts on
optimizing the battery usage for the idle case, while Google works on optimizing
the battery usage in Wear OS.
QCC1110
The ultra-low-power co-processor in the Snapdragon Wear 3100 platform took
Qualcomm 2 years to develop. The co-processor is responsible for managing that
95% of idle time that most smartwatches are in. It’s incredibly small—only
21mm²—and consumes 20 times less active power than the application
processor. It has custom designed static RAM (SRAM), runs an Event-Driven real-
time operating system (RTOS), and uses Near-Threshold Computing techniques
to operate at the lowest possible voltage. Although the co-processor can be
standalone, it works in tandem with the application processor for enhanced
audio, display, and sensor experiences. Its deep learning engine for custom
workloads like keyword detection is extensible over time.
PMW3100
The new wearable Power Management Integrated Circuit (PMIC) is designed for
lower power operation while reducing the size and increasing integration. It
adds a new Digital Signal Processor (DSP) framework with support for next-
generation sensor processing in an open execution environment to allow OEMs
to implement their own algorithm to create their own sports experience. There’s
also a new dual-display architecture to let each processor (the application
processor and the co-processor) power the display independently.
Enhanced Ambient Mode: For fashion watches, support a smooth second hand,
up to 16 colors active on the display, live complications like step count, battery
life, etc., and improved brightness by taking advantage of the ambient light
sensor to dim or brighten the display.
Dedicated Sports Experiences: For sports watches, support long-durations (up to
15 hours based on a typical 450mAh battery capacity) of activities such as
running, swimming, biking, hiking, and more with the GPS and heart rate sensors
enabled.
Traditional Watch Mode: For all smartwatches, support extended battery life by
shutting down Wear OS while still showing the clock and date complications
(watch face can still be customized). If the smartwatch switches to this mode at
15% battery, you can expect up to 1 week of extended battery life. If the
smartwatch extends to this mode at full battery capacity, you can expect up to 1
month of extended battery life.
The Enhanced Ambient Mode and Traditional Watch Mode will be available at
the launch of the platform. The Dedicated Sports Experience will be available in
the future with the release of a sports-focused smartwatch.