New Qualcomm smartwatch SoC likely to be unveiled on September 10th
Smartwatches are likely to get an SoC upgrade this September, as Qualcomm teases details about a launch event in San Francisco in a save-the-date poster invite.
American chip-maker Qualcomm has reportedly sent out invites for an event scheduled for September 10th in San Francisco. The poster has an illustration of a watch with “It’s time.” written above. It is expected that the semiconductor manufacturer will launch a new SoC for wearables next month, an update to the current generation Snapdragon Wear 2100 SoC on smartwatches.
Smartwatches, which are touchscreen wristbands pair-able with smartphones, have slowly become ubiquitous among the now health conscious urban audience. And what’s interesting is that many mobile companies have already entered the market with smartwatch offerings. Earlier in May, Google and Qualcomm had confirmed that a new SoC design for wearable devices was in the works, and this is something that could well be launched this September.
Several popular gadget reviewers on Twitter shared images of the invite asking to save the date on September 10. It will not be a surprising move by the chipmaker, since the Snapdragon Wear 2100 SoC that currently powers most of the Wear OS devices is over two years old.
The company’s Senior Wearables Director, Pankaj Kedia, had said in an earlier NDTV Gadgets report that the third-generation SoCs – after the Snapdragon 400 and Snapdragon 2100 – have been designed from the ground up “for a no-compromises smartwatch experience” and include dedicated chips to enable always-on functionality. He had said that the next platform will be the first with “purpose-built chips”.
