Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear 3100 Smartwatch Chip Promises Up To 2 Days of Battery Life (venturebeat.com) 45
Qualcomm has unveiled the long-awaited successor to its Snapdragon Wear 2100 smartwatch chipset, the Snapdragon Wear 3100. The new high-end chipset is "based on a brand-new architecture Qualcomm claims is the most efficient it's ever created, optimized for wearables-specific use cases like step tracking, heart rate monitoring, and always-on connectivity," reports VentureBeat. From the report: [T]he company's engineers stuffed the Snapdragon Wear 3100 with a four A7 cores and two secondary chips -- a digital signal processor (DSP) and an ultra-low power coprocessor (QCC1110) -- in what Qualcomm calls a "big-small-tiny" arrangement. The "big" A7 cores handle intensive, complex tasks like switching between apps, while the "small" and "tiny" DSP and coprocessor perform sensor fusion and other background chores. The way Pankaj Kedia, senior director and business lead at Qualcomm's Smart Wearable division, tells it, the coprocessor -- a diminutive 5.2mm x 4mm chip that's the product of more than five years of research -- is the inarguable showrunner. It taps a Qualcomm-designed memory module that draws a mere 0.6 volts of power, and it's altogether 20 times more power-efficient than the A7 cores.
It's principally meant for light workloads like listening for the wake phrases that precede voice commands ("OK, Google"), streaming music in the background, and updating digital watch faces. However, it's designed to be extensible -- OEMs can tap the coprocessor for real-time sleep and activity monitoring, for example, or for heart rate tracking. The coprocessor -- along with the DSP and A7 cores -- drive three smartwatch operating modes intended to boost battery life. Enhanced ambient mode displays a basic watch face UI in up to 16 colors, with a smoothly animated second hand, live complications, and ambient brightness. Traditional watch mode dispenses with those bells and whistles in favor of a basic analog watch face. Dedicated sports mode -- which isn't available at launch, but will arrive later with sports OEMs, Kedia said -- enables core features like heart rate and GPS tracking, but nothing else. When compared to the Wear 2100, the Wear 3100 offers significantly improved battery life. Here's a comparison (from Qualcomm) of the Wear 3100 and Wear 2100's power consumption:
-Lowest power mode: 67 percent lower
-GPS and location batching: 49 percent lower
-Keyword detection: 43 percent lower
-Clock update once per minute: 35 percent lower
-MP3 playback: 34 percent lower
-Voice queries over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi: 13 percent lower
"The translates to gains of about four to twelve hours in practice (depending on the form factor), or between a day and a half to two days of battery life," reports VentureBeat. "In traditional watch mode, Wear 3100 devices can last up to a week on a charge with 20 percent battery (or up to 30 days with full battery), according to Qualcomm, or 15 hours in dedicated sports mode (with a 450mAh battery)." Some other features include a new more-accepted NFC chip, an improved 4G LTE modem, and a new power management system to improve the efficiency of charging. We can expect the 3100 to appear in smartwatches "this holiday season."
It's principally meant for light workloads like listening for the wake phrases that precede voice commands ("OK, Google"), streaming music in the background, and updating digital watch faces. However, it's designed to be extensible -- OEMs can tap the coprocessor for real-time sleep and activity monitoring, for example, or for heart rate tracking. The coprocessor -- along with the DSP and A7 cores -- drive three smartwatch operating modes intended to boost battery life. Enhanced ambient mode displays a basic watch face UI in up to 16 colors, with a smoothly animated second hand, live complications, and ambient brightness. Traditional watch mode dispenses with those bells and whistles in favor of a basic analog watch face. Dedicated sports mode -- which isn't available at launch, but will arrive later with sports OEMs, Kedia said -- enables core features like heart rate and GPS tracking, but nothing else. When compared to the Wear 2100, the Wear 3100 offers significantly improved battery life. Here's a comparison (from Qualcomm) of the Wear 3100 and Wear 2100's power consumption:
-Lowest power mode: 67 percent lower
-GPS and location batching: 49 percent lower
-Keyword detection: 43 percent lower
-Clock update once per minute: 35 percent lower
-MP3 playback: 34 percent lower
-Voice queries over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi: 13 percent lower
"The translates to gains of about four to twelve hours in practice (depending on the form factor), or between a day and a half to two days of battery life," reports VentureBeat. "In traditional watch mode, Wear 3100 devices can last up to a week on a charge with 20 percent battery (or up to 30 days with full battery), according to Qualcomm, or 15 hours in dedicated sports mode (with a 450mAh battery)." Some other features include a new more-accepted NFC chip, an improved 4G LTE modem, and a new power management system to improve the efficiency of charging. We can expect the 3100 to appear in smartwatches "this holiday season."
Moronwatch. (Score:1)
They're not for smart people, let's face it.
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Re:It's not stupid, it's advanced (Score:5, Funny)
So basically this is a watch that forces you to recharge every day (until the battery degrades)
That is pretty good. My wife has an Apple Watch and needs to recharge every few hours.
I wouldn't be so bad if she would stop installing silly wallpaper apps, and video albums.
It was even worse before I helped her uninstall the bitcoin miner. I have no idea how that got into the app store.
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My Citizen Eco is fifteen years old and I haven't had to mess with its battery at all. The idea of having one more thing to charge makes me cringe.
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>"So basically this is a watch that forces you to recharge every day (until the battery degrades)"
Um, pretty much like a phone?
>"that can't keep accurate time for longer than a minute (unless it synchronizes),"
Have worn 3 smartwatches of different models over 5 years, none have had that issue.
>"that tracks your location and listens to your voice under programmatic control"
Completely up to you in settings.
>"and that plays back music over headphones with batteries that don't even last as long as t
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It's a choice.
Own a smart watch - or be smart.
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My few years old non-analog Casio has only 7 years battery life. Clearly some progress has happened. I only miss manual drift compensation and digital pocket watch format.
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>"My 1980's Casio can run 20 years on one battery"
How long does your smart phone run on one battery? That would be the more appropriate comparison.
Besides, a 1980's Casio watch can't do: notifications, remote control, internet searches, heart rate, step counter, send text messages, take notes, show weather and news, reminders, monitor sleep, voice-to-text... Your comparison isn't valid.
Oh, and with the Gear S3, at least, if you just want it to tell the time only, it will last over 40 days between charg
Shows time (Score:2)
Besides, a 1980's Casio watch can't do: notifications, remote control, internet searches, heart rate, step counter, send text messages, take notes, show weather and news, reminders, monitor sleep, voice-to-text...
On the other hand, it can still tell you the time more than 2 hours after you've unplugged it, and I've kind of read somewhere that this was supposed to be the main purpose of a watch.
I've already have a device for all the rest, it's my smartphone.
(And I've only switched to smartphone once PDA stopped being a thing. Before that I preferred putting the smart functions in a separate device, and have a phone that can make phone calls, even if your PDA's battery is flat.... after one week of use).
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My 1980's Casio can run 20 years on one battery,
So did mine.
My 2000s Casio is solar powered, so... no limit.
Two whole days! (Score:2)
RIP Pebble. You were getting there.
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... the day my Time Steel dies will be a dark day.
My Pebble Round's battery finally died and it was a dark day indeed. I recently replaced it with a Garmin vivomove HR, which has an analogue face and a small OLED display for notifications, step counter, music controls and weather, which is basically all I ever used on the Pebble, but also adds a heart rate monitor and happily lasts a week on a single charge. It's also lighter and thinner than most of the clunky "smart" watches and while it's not as thin as the Pebble it's certianly better looking. It's no
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Why hasn't anyone picked up on the e-ink smartwatch combo? Is it patented and held by Fitbit?
Low power bluetooth is now a widespread thing. These watches ought to be getting into the 2-week per charge range by now. Damn it.
RIP Pebble.
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The Pareto principle (Score:1)
O RLY? (Score:3)
0.6 volts of power? This isn't even pedantic, it's just plain wrong.
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0.6 volts of power? This isn't even pedantic, it's just plain wrong.
Just today I learned the Tesla Model 3 can go 100 KPH on a charge.
LOVE the summary (Score:5, Funny)
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2 Whole Days!?? OMG! : P (Score:2)
Didn't you think that meeting was important?
Do you value your job here?
Did you ever consider that your job should have come before wearing a gadget?
Is this box big enough for you things?
Can you close the door on your way out?
Amazfit Bip (Score:2)
I miss Pebble (Score:1)