Qualcomm launches Snapdragon Wear 4100 series for wearables

Qualcomm just announced its latest Snapdragon Wear 4100 series of chipsets for the Wearables coming in 2020. According to the specs, it brings over a huge upgrade compared to its predecessor. The Snapdragon Wear 4100+ is designed to deliver 85% better performance than the Snapdragon Wear 3100.

The two variants released are almost similar with very few changes. Snapdragon Wear 4100+ supports only Wear OS by Google while Snapdragon Wear 4100 supports Wear OS by Google as well as Android Open Source. The Snapdragon Wear 4100+ includes the main SoC, the Always-On (AON) co-processor for low power states, along with companion chips including PMIC, RF for cellular modem/GPS, and Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, and RFFE. The cheaper Snapdragon Wear 4100 does not have the AON co-processor.

The Wear 4100+ is built on a 12nm process and has a 1.7 GHz quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU, Adreno 504 GPU, support for 750 MHz LPDDR3 memory and eMMC 4.5 storage, as well as dual ISPs with support for up to 16 MP cameras. The Snapdragon Wear3100 was built on 28nm and had support for only 16 colors. Now the Snapdragon Wear 4100+ supports 64k color display.

It also supports 4G LTE modems which can make it an independent device to make or receive calls without the need for a smartphone. The integrated NFC support also allows for quick hassle-free payment solutions. It comes with Wi-Fi Standards 802.11a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 5 and 4.2 depending upon the variant. The smart AON co-processor enhances battery life and handles continuous heart rate and sleep monitoring, step counting, alarms, timers, and haptics, and it also has faster tilt-to-wake responsiveness. The first device with the latest chipset, Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 3 is already launched with other companies to follow soon.