Based on an updated architecture, the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 features a quad-core Cortex-A7 block, a dedicated Hexagon™ QDSP6 v56 DSP, an ultra-low-power co-processor, the Qualcomm QCC1110, and the Adreno 305 GPU.

In this hierarchical system architecture approach, as Qualcomm describes it, the "big" quad-core Cortex-A7 block, clocked at up to 1.2GHz, should take care of all the high-performance tasks, while the new QCC1100 co-processor, measuring at just around 22mm2, should significantly extend the battery life.

Three new "personalized experiences" for Wear OS

In cooperation with Google's Wear OS team, the next generation Wear Os smartwatches will have three modes, or personalized experiences, the Enhanced Ambient Mode, Dedicated Sports Experiences, and the Traditional Watch Mode.

The Enhanced Ambient Mode will support smooth second-hand animation, up to 16 colors, and improved brightness. The so-called Dedicated Sports Experiences will focus on GPS and heart rate sensor, while the Traditional Watch Mode, will let users enjoy the standard watch functions for a significantly increased week long battery life.

It is all about the battery life

All previous smartwatches were plagued by the same problem, battery life, as it is quite hard to fit a large battery inside a small, standard watch chassis (with some exceptions like the Withings Steel HR, and some Fitbit, Garmin, and Pebble models).

According to Qualcomm and when compared to the previous Snapdragon Wear 2100 platform, the new Wear 3100 will see an improvement of four to 12 hours in battery life, depending on the battery size, display, and other specifications. In the Personalized Sports Experiences it should run up to 15 hours (with typical 450mAh battery), which is not half bad, and the week- ong battery life in the Traditional Watch Mode sounds even more impressive.

Qualcomm implemented plenty of battery saving features inside the new Snapdragon Wear 3100 platform, including the QCC1100 co-processor, a new wearable power management sub-system (PMW3100), a new dual display architecture, and even new high-performance Gallium Arsenide power amplifiers for the Snapdragon Wear 3100 version with 4G LTE modem.

When it comes to the modem, the Snapdragon Wear 3100 comes with Snapdragon X5 LTE modem with peak DL of 1Gbps and peak UL of 150Mbps. The rest of the connectivity options include low power WiFi and Bluetooth, NFC, and GPS, Glonass, Beidou, and Galileo.  It also comes with Qualcomm's set of audio features like the Noise and Echo Cancellation, Voice Suite, Voice Activation, and Aqstic audio codec and speaker amplifier.

Smartwatches from big names coming soon

Qualcomm noted that the Snapdragon Wear 3100 platform is in mass production from today and it even has three big names gearing for launch pretty soon, including Fossil Group, Louis Vuitton, and Montblanc.

We are quite sure that these are only some of the first big names as plenty of others will be jumping on this train pretty soon so it will be interesting to see what kind of fresh smartwatches will be available by the end of this year.