Qualcomm has launched their latest smartwatch platform today, announcing the new ultra-low power Snapdragon Wear 3100 at a Google-supported event which also included the announcement of the first customers of this new platform.

The Snapdragon Wear 3100 uses what the company calls “a new ultra-low power hierarchical system architecture approach”, with high-performance A7 processor cores supported by a high-efficiency integrated DSP and the new ultra-low power QCC1110 co-processor.

“The new co-processor, the Qualcomm QCC1110, has been designed from the ground up and is at the heart of the Snapdragon Wear 3100 platform. It is incredibly small at ~21mm2, is optimized for ultra-low power operation, and acts as a powerful companion to the main processor, re-defining audio, display, and sensor experiences for next generation smartwatches. The co-processor also integrates a deep learning engine for custom workloads, such as keyword detection, and is extensible over time.”

A new PMW3100 power management sub-system also supports “lower power and higher integration”, as the goal is naturally to improve battery life as well as performance. The W3100 will offer 4 – 12 hours longer life than the previous W2100 platform, according to Qualcomm.

Smartwatches are in many ways a lifestyle product, and Qualcomm announced a trio of designer customers of the new Snapdragon Wear 3100 Platform:

“With the Snapdragon Wear 3100 Platform, we envisioned a new ultra-low power system architecture and in collaboration with the latest from the Wear OS by Google team, to help deliver a rich interactive mode, bring in new personalized experiences and support extended battery life for tomorrow’s smartwatches. We are delighted to announce Fossil Group, Louis Vuitton, and Montblanc as our first Snapdragon Wear 3100 customers.”

Qualcomm states that this new Snapdragon Wear 3100 platform will be offered “in three variants targeting Bluetooth and Wi-Fi tethered smartwatches, GPS-based tethered smartwatches, and 4G LTE connected smartwatches”, and that the W3100 “is in mass production and shipping today”.