Qualcomm have been busy at MWC Shanghai already announcing their new ultrasonic fingerprint technology and their Snapdragon 450 chipset but they haven’t stopped there. Alongside these new products they have announced the new Snapdragon Wear 1200 processor.
The Snapdragon Wear 1200 chipset is the successor to last year’s 1100 processor. The new Wear 1200 processor is 45% smaller and at the same time supports the new ultra-low power modes for LTE — M1 and NB1. These new standards allow low-power, low-cost devices to have LTE capabilities. The new Wear 1200 can support 300Kbps down and 375Kbps up for Cat M1, and just 20Kbps down and 60Kbps up for Cat NB1. NB1 devices are expected to send information more than they receive it.
The previous generation chipset, the Wear 1100 had a standby time of seven days but the new weak 1200 chipset has a 10 day standby time. Also supporting Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2LE the new chipset is expected to arrive in low-cost wearables first where battery life is a great concern.
The Snapdragon 1200 is commercially available now and is shipping in reference designs from Borqs and Quanta as we speak. The reference designs are targeting the child, elderly and pet tracking segments of the market.
Hopefully we will start to see some longer life in our Android Wear devices as a flow on effect from this announcement. I also cannot wait to get a wearable for my cat.
