When you think wearables from the likes of Google, Motorola and Samsung, you probably think earbuds and maybe watches. But in the age of AI, a whole new world of wearable tech is coming to life, and we could see these companies soon branch out to make AI-powered pins, pendants and other unexpected gadgets too.
This new generation of wearable tech will be made possible by Qualcomm, which on Monday announced the latest version of its wearables chip, the Snapdragon Wear Elite, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This new platform will be used by a range of partners, including Google, Motorola and Samsung to design a constellation of new devices.
Qualcomm’s philosophy toward wearables is very much “build it, and they will come.” It makes the underlying technology that will power devices and will then encourage companies to build on top of it how they see fit.
When I attended the company’s Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii last year, Qualcomm Chief Marketing Officer Don McGuire painted me a picture of how he imagines the convergence of AI and wearables playing out.
“AI is going to be ambient in a lot of ways,” he told me. It might not even be called a “device” if it’s something woven into your clothing or worn on your person. “There’s lots of ideas out there floating around,” he said.
At the same event, Dino Bekis, who runs Qualcomm’s wearables business, introduced me to the Looki L1 — a life-logging camera created with the company’s W5 Gen 2 chip. This is the wearables platform Qualcomm introduced last year, which was designed to work with Google’s Wear OS and launched with the Pixel Watch.
Unlike its predecessor, the new Wear Elite chip will work across Google’s Wear OS, Android and Linux, with a neural processing unit that enables on-device AI with low power consumption. This is key for wearable devices, which you don’t necessarily want to charge every day. Qualcomm says the Wear Elite’s advanced power management enables 30% longer battery use, compared to the previous version, with rapid charging bringing devices to 50% in around ten minutes.
“The Snapdragon Wear Elite platform opens new possibilities, delivering the performance, battery life and connectivity essential for the next generation of Wear OS,” said Bjørn Kilburn, general manager of Wear OS by Google, in a statement.
The first devices powered by the Wear Elite chip should be available in the coming months, with Motorola saying it will use the platform to build more AI wearable devices like AI concept Project Maxwell, which it showed at CES in January, and Samsung saying it will integrate Wear Elite into the next Galaxy Watch. This will make the watch into “an even more holistic wellness companion,” said InKang Song, EVP and head of tech strategy at Samsung.
Samsung and Google might be focused on watches, but Snapdragon Wear Elite points to a future halo of personal wearables, which CNET Editor at Large Scott Stein has explored in more detail. The possibilities stretch beyond what we’ve seen so far as this latest platform is embraced by companies big and small. I’ll be looking for demos making use of the new chip this week at MWC, so stay tuned for more.
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