Snapdragon Wear 5+ Gen 1: New smartwatch SoC as of August

Qualcomm has officially unveiled its new smartwatch SoC called Snapdragon Wear 5 Gen 1+. It presents itself significantly improved in all aspects compared to the Wear 4100+ platform, not least thanks to 4 nm manufacturing, performance and energy efficiency are significantly higher than the predecessor.

Snapdragon Wear 5+ Gen 1 in detail

The Snapdragon Wear 4100 (+) SoC will soon be retired. The chip was used in current smartwatches such as the Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra GPS (our review) or the new TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E4.

Qualcomm now presented the successor with the Snapdragon Wear 5 Gen 1+, which is also accompanied by a name change that reminds us of the Smartphone SoC Snapdragon 8 (+) Gen 1. However, that is still the least exciting innovation.

The new chip is manufactured in a 4 nm process (compared to 12 nm in the predecessor), which promises higher performance with better energy efficiency. This is despite the fact that the new SoC also relies on four ARM Cortex-A53 cores with clock rates of up to 1.7 GHz. However, the co-processor is completely redesigned for the always-on display.

If an M0 with 50 MHz was previously used, the Wear 5+ Gen 1 relies on a 250 MHz fast M55 chip. In combination with the improved GPU (up to 1 GHz) and the significantly higher clocked RAM (LPDDR4 2,133 MHz), this allows doubling the performance compared to the predecessor.

Increased energy efficiency

The chip’s energy efficiency has also been significantly improved. Thanks to a special low-power island, an “island” encapsulates itself from the already low-power Bluetooth architecture exactly when technologies such as GNSS, Wi-Fi or audio are used. In combination with the even more frugal Hibernate mode, the energy consumption is supposed to drop below 0.5 mA.

In practice, this means an increase in efficiency of over 50 percent. Which in turn (hopefully) means as much as Android smartwatches and wearables with Snapdragon Wear 5+ Gen 1 will offer significantly longer battery runtimes in the future than the usual 24-36 hours, which we still had to criticize not least in the Fossil Gen 6 (our review).

The latest Bluetooth 5.3 is also integrated directly into the co-processor. In addition, the modem, GNSS and cameras have received a hefty update. The new chip architecture is also much more space-saving and allows for much thinner smartwatches than was previously possible. Here Qualcomm speaks of a reduction in size of over 30 percent compared to the predecessor SoC.

First smartwatches come from Mobvoi and Oppo

The Snapdragon Wear 5 Gen 1 (without the co-processor and + in the name) is expected to make its debut in a new smartwatch from Oppo. The Oppo Watch 3 is expected to replace its predecessor model from 2021, which already boasted an impressive battery life of up to 16 days. It is expected to be released as early as August 2022.

The more powerful Snapdragon Wear 5 Gen 1+, on the other hand, can be found in a new smartwatch from Mobvoi, which will then also use Google’s (energy-hungry) Wear OS. It will be exciting to see what runtimes the new SoC can get out of the model. The new TicWatch should be available in fall 2022.

At the same time, Qualcomm notes that there are currently 25 more customer designs from various manufacturers in the pipeline, promising designer and health wearables, as well as models for kids, sports enthusiasts, and fashion and luxury models.