Qualcomm may have had a pretty forgettable 2015, but the new year promises to be so much better for the San Diego, CA-based chipmaker. Just earlier in the day, the company announced a bunch of new entry and mid-level mobile chips, but it is the new Snapdragon 820 that tech enthusiasts are eagerly waiting for. Also, there’s the exciting new X16 LTE modem, which reportedly supports theoretical download speeds of up to 1 Gigabit. Qualcomm will be hoping that’s its latest offerings will go down well with both its OEM partners as well as end-consumers. Last year, all the overheating controversies surrounding the last-generation Snapdragon 810 took a severe toll on the company’s bottom-line, prompting the company to layoff a large number of its employees in an effort to cut costs.
As part of its new lineup of chips, Qualcomm has announced a new one dedicated entirely to wearables. The chip is called Snapdragon Wear 2100, which, according to its maker, is 30 percent smaller and 25 percent more power efficient than the current favorite of smart wearables makers – the Snapdragon 400. Now that particular chip is an aging SoC originally designed for smartphones and tablets rather than the smart wearables sector. The new Snapdragon Wear chip, meanwhile, on account of it being smaller and more power efficient, should allow future wearable devices to be slimmer and more elegant, and at the same time, hopefully, have better battery life. In theory at least, specialized chips designed for wearable devices should be able to tackle some of the persistent complaints about present-day smart wearables – abysmal battery life and lack of aesthetics.
What must also be pleasing for Qualcomm is that one of the leading consumer electronics companies in the world has already hopped onto the Snapdragon Wear bandwagon. LG Electronics has now officially announced that it will be making use of the new Qualcomm chip in some of its upcoming wearable devices, including smartwatches. According to the company’s vice president of wearables, Mr. David Yoon, “We are delighted about Qualcomm Technologies’ next generation wearable plans, are planning to extend our collaboration with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100 processor, and look forward to launching new smartwatches and other wearable devices that bring new and innovative use cases to consumers later this year”. LG’s current flagship smartwatch is the Watch Urbane, but prior to the launch of that one, the company had already introduced two other such devices in the market – the G Watch and the G Watch R.