Last year, Qualcomm had launched Snapdragon Wear 4100 SoC for wearable devices and now the company is gearing up to launch its successor, which is likely to be called Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 5100.
Folks at XDA-Developers have come across build ID “LAW.UM.2.0-00700-SW5100.00” while digging code in Qualcomm’s Code Aurora Forum. In this context, “LAW” stands for “Linux Android Wear” and for those who are unaware, Android Wear is the operating system that is now known as Wear OS.
The “UM” stands for “Unified Modem” and “SW5100” is referring to the Snapdragon Wear 5100 name. As per the report, the chip is codenamed “monaco.” It is expected to be based on Qualcomm’s “bengal” platform.
This new chip could come with a quad-core processor with ARM Cortex-A73 cores. For comparison, the current-generation Snapdragon 4100 comes with a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 configuration.
The report goes on to mention that code snippets indicate that this new chip for wearable devices is based on Android 10 and Android 11. So, there’s a question mark about the support for the Wear OS 3 platform which is a unified version of Google and Samsung’s operating system for wearable devices.
Qualcomm has announced that the existing Snapdragon Wear 3100, 4100, and 4100+ chips are capable of running Wear OS 3 but it’s unlikely that the device manufacturers will be releasing a major update for the devices.
A few days ago, the company also announced the Wearables Ecosystem Accelerator program, which aims to have Qualcomm at the center of the upcoming Wear OS devices.
While Qualcomm has released a few chips for wearable devices, it has not been able to make its mark in this segment. Even smartphone makers are now slowly designing their own chips, Google is the latest example with its Tensor SoC. It will be interesting to see what Qualcomm has up its sleeves to remain a dominant player in the market.
RELATED:Â
Comments