Qualcomm announces the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 chip for wearables, built on 4nm process

It’s been a couple of years now since Qualcomm’s last lineup of wearable-focused system-on-chips, the Snapdragon Wear 4100 and Snapdragon Wear 4100+. Well, they’ve since gone and revealed their newest two system-on-chips for wearables, the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 and Snapdragon W5 Gen 1.

Both the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 and Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 are built on the 4nm process, and come with twice the performance the performance as well as a 50% longer battery life compared to its predecessor. With the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1, we’re looking at four Cortex-A53 cores with a top speed of 1.7GHz, along with an A702 GPU clocked at 1GHz, which is significantly higher than the A504 clocked at 320MHz on the older Snapdragon Wear 4100. It features support for LPDDR4 memory too, along with an additional U55 machine learning unit now. As for the Snapdragon W5 Gen 1, from what we gather it’s similar to the W5+ Gen 1 except for one crucial part: the presence of an always on (AON) co-processor.

Built using a Cortex M55 core running at 250MHz, the co-processor on the W5+ Gen 1 is a 22nm chip helps with things like low-power Bluetooth 5.3 and WiFi connectivity, as well as low power states such as Hibernate and Deep Sleep. The AON co-processor also helps with speech processing, audio playback and notifications too. All of this helps to significantly improve its power-saving capabilities on the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1. The Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 which doesn’t have the AON co-processor meanwhile will find itself better suited for segment-specific use cases such as wearables for kids, seniors and enterprise.

“The new wearable platforms – Snapdragon W5+ and Snapdragon W5 – represent our most advanced leap yet. Purpose-built for next generation wearables, these platforms address the most pressing consumer needs by delivering ultra-low power, breakthrough performance, and highly integrated packaging.

Additionally, we extend our proven hybrid architecture with new low power innovations such as Deep Sleep and Hibernate states delighting consumers with premium user experiences while extending battery life,” – Pankaj Kedia, Qualcomm Global Head of Smart Wearables

Overall, it’s looking to be a big step up for Qualcomm in the wearable scene. They’ve been surpassed by Samsung’s Exynos W920 chip found in the Galaxy Watch 4 series by quite a bit, and it’s nice to see them return with what on paper seems to be a solid chip. It will be significantly smaller than the Snapdragon Wear 4100, allowing for smaller wearable designs. It also has support for WearOS by Google as well as Android AOSP and FreeRTOS ope rating systems, and uses eMMC 4.5 for storage.

Chinese companies Mobvoi and Oppo have already signed up to be the first manufacturers to launch wearables with the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 chip, with a total of 25 designs lined up so far. The Oppo Watch 3 series will be dropping this August, while Mobvoi will be launching the Snapdragon W+ Gen 1-powered TicWatch sometime in fall. In the meantime, Qualcomm also revealed two reference designs by Compal and Pegatron, which use WearOS by Google and Android respectively.

You can check out more about the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 chip on its product page on the Qualcomm website here.