In the consumer electronics industry, it is often not too surprising that product specifications change while it is still under development. After all, due to market competition, yield rate and other considerations, manufacturers often prepare multiple plans from the beginning, and finally select the most feasible solution in internal competition to put into mass production.
That being said, if there is too much difference between a product's "pre-development version" and the "post-development version", it is often a very noteworthy signal. Because it either reflects that the relevant manufacturers have suffered major changes in the supply chain or technology research and development, or it indicates that the market trend and competition pattern have undergone a great change compared with the initial filing of the case.
For example, the Recent Double Clickback Snapdragon Wear5100, which has recently been exposed, makes us Sanyi Life very excited.
After half a year, a chip has not yet been released and "replaced"
What is Snapdragon Wear5100? Literally, it's qualcomm's next generation of smartwatch platforms that haven't yet been released. In fact, as early as August 2021, some netizens found that Qualcomm uploaded code including "SW5100" entries to a forum, and this is the earliest "official exposure" of Snapdragon Wear5100.
According to the analysis results of this code by the developer community XDA at that time, the "Snapdragon Wear5100" at that time most likely adopted a hardware architecture design based on snapdragon 662 derivation. This means that it is likely to be equipped with four Cortex-A73 large cores, or even a combination of A73*1+A53*3 "size cores", resulting in a significant improvement in CPU performance compared to the previous generation. At the same time, however, the 11nm process also means that its energy efficiency may not have made too obvious progress.
However, only half a year later, when the information about the Snapdragon Wear5100 was exposed again, we found that the specifications this time had changed considerably compared with the previous version.
First of all, in the key semiconductor process, the recently exposed information shows that the Snapdragon Wear5100 will use a 4nm semiconductor process. Unsurprisingly, this could make it the industry's first smart wearable chip based on a 4nm process.
Secondly, according to the information currently exposed, the high-end model Wear5100+ in the Snapdragon Wear5100 series may also have a new coprocessor named "QCC5100". It will be based on the Cortex-M55 architecture, with ultra-low power consumption and good performance, which can independently complete motion monitoring, music decoding, control Bluetooth connection, and even display some notification information on the driver screen (such as a simple screen reminder) without the main CPU booting.
The most critical thing is that due to the current revelations have confirmed that this master controller will have a built-in Adreno702 GPU. This means that at least in terms of GPU, the Snapdragon Wear5100 series is expected to switch to the same generation of architectural design as the Snapdragon 8 Gen1, rather than based on the previously exposed old platform.
It is not difficult to find that if this breaking news information is true, then the final "Snapdragon Wear5100" series of smart watch master control is expected to usher in a huge leap in terms of process, architecture, or overall performance level.
However, it is precisely because the currently exposed Snapdragon Wear5100 is too much of a change compared to previous generations of products or compared to the revelations of several months ago. So we can't help but have a question, why is this so?
Under the pressure of market competition, Qualcomm has reason to be serious
In fact, starting from the earliest Snapdragon Wear2100, the entire "Snapdragon Wear" family has actually been deeply bound to Google's Wear OS ecology for a long time. This also means that in the past, when various terminal manufacturers wanted to launch "Google Watch", they had to purchase Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear chip solution, and to some extent, they also "bottomed out" the sales of this product line.
But that has changed a lot since Google announced a partnership with Samsung in the smartwatch product line early last year. As we all know, the latest version of Wear OS 3 chose Samsung's Galaxy Watch 4 series to debut, and has not yet been pushed to any Snapdragon Wear-based devices. Not only that, according to the previous breaking information, Google's latest "Pixel Watch" smart watch may not use Qualcomm's solution, but is based on Samsung chips for customization.
Why did Google suddenly hold hands with Samsung and "snub" Qualcomm on the technical cooperation of smart watches? Some people believe that on the one hand, this is because Google itself does not "get" the low-power health monitoring function of the new version of Wear OS, but Samsung's Tizen system has a wealth of experience in this regard, so Google has to ask for Samsung.
On the other hand, it may be because Samsung's smart watch master control has certain advantages in terms of process and function compared with Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear in the same period, after all, when Qualcomm is still using the 28nm process, the Samsung Exynos9110 released in 2018 has already used the 10nm process. Not to mention that the Samsung Exynos W920 released last year is based on the 5nm process and the architecture of the Cortex A55+Mali-G68, which fully demonstrates its endurance advantages when cooperating with Google's latest system.
Understanding this, let's take a look at the Snapdragon Wear5100 series exposed this time, which may use the latest 4nm process, the latest architecture solutions, and newly designed coprocessors. Obviously, the significantly improved performance and energy efficiency ratio will be an important weight for Snapdragon Wear5100 to win back the "initiative", and it will also be a heavy responsibility.
New chips have emerged, and "all-smart watches" have ushered in the spring
Of course, no matter what Qualcomm's intention to greatly strengthen the Snapdragon Wear5100 specifications, or even suspected of "overturning the redo", considering that it is indeed expected to reach the top in terms of hard quality, it will inevitably make us think about the impact it may have on the entire smart watch market after its listing.
Although the Samsung Galaxy Watch4 series is not cheap, it has been greatly welcomed by the market
On the one hand, looking at the sales data of today's smart watch market, it will be found that compared with the "light smart watch" with simple functions, low price and up to several weeks of battery life, the "full smart watch" with powerful functions, higher price and battery life of about three or four days is actually welcomed by more consumers. This obviously reflects the fact that users who have a demand for such products will prioritize features over price.
On the other hand, judging from the current trends of several other mainstream smart watch brands, Qualcomm is not the only one who is greatly strengthening the performance of the new master control performance and energy efficiency. For example, a few days ago, it was revealed that Apple Watch Series 8 is also expected to significantly improve the fluency and identify more accurate sports status as the main selling point, and in order to do this, Apple will also equip the new product with a new master controller with a sharp rise in specifications.
After years of development, all-smart watches are expected to regain their mainstream position in the market
What does this mean? Looking back at the development history of the entire smart watch product, it is not difficult to find that although the "full smart watch" with independent operating system, powerful functions and scalable software is the initial and most complete form of such products, but limited by the poor performance of the main control performance and energy efficiency, in the past a long period of time, the castration performance in exchange for battery life "light smart watch" has also been popular.
But now, Samsung, Qualcomm, and Apple have made efforts to create a new all-smart watch master control situation, which seems to indicate that consumers have begun to lose interest in "light smart watches" that only have price advantages but seriously insufficient experience. The fully intelligent watch, which is constantly maturing in technology, is expected to become the winner who laughs to the end.
【The picture of this article comes from the network】