Qualcomm releases Wear 4100 series smartwatch chips: performance improved by 85%

       Early morning on July 1, Qualcomm released two new Wear OS processors, Snapdragon Wear 4100 Plus and Snapdragon Wear 4100. This is the first major update to the smartwatch platform since 2018.

Moving from 28nm to 12nm

　　The Snapdragon Wear 4100 SoC finally abandoned the Cortex-A7 core and 28nm process and switched to the Cortex-A53 core and 12nm process. Although this is not epoch-making, it has greatly improved performance and energy efficiency.

　　Qualcomm claims that the new chip will be significantly faster, with significant improvements in GPU, memory, camera and battery life.

　　The last major revision of the Snapdragon Wear series was the Snapdragon Wear 3100, a minor update to the Snapdragon 2100 in 2016. In fact, given that the main processors of the 2100 and 3100 are exactly the same, the debut of the 4100 marks the first qualitative improvement of Wear OS in about four years.

Performance and battery life have been greatly improved

       Qualcomm continues to use the main SoC + coprocessor architecture on its smartwatch platform. The Wear 4100 is the main processor chip for active and interactive use of the device, while an auxiliary coprocessor is an always-on chip that enables non-interactive device usage in the environment, such as turning on the screen with static, low-update information.

　　The biggest change this time is in the processor process. The Wear 4100 series chips jump from 28nm to 12nm. Four A53 CPU cores with a clock frequency of 1.7GHz replace the A7 cores of the 3100 (only 1.1GHz). Qualcomm claims that its performance is improved by more than 85%. The GPU is now Adreno A504 (two and a half times faster than the 3100) and there is faster memory.

　　The QCC1110 co-processor of Wear 4100 Plus can display 64,000 colors and support continuous heart rate tracking, alarms, haptic feedback and more. The Wear 4100 series uses a new 12nm CPU architecture, and battery life will be increased by 25%.

　　Qualcomm is already shipping Wear 4100 and 4100 Plus chips to hardware manufacturers, and the first devices will be available in the coming months.

　　Mobvoi has announced that it is developing a new TicWatch model that will use this chip, and Xiaotiancai is also developing a children's smartwatch equipped with the Wear 4100 chip.