Snapdragon

Although Wear OS has been around for a long time now, especially if you consider its former Android Wear incarnation, its strength came from sheer numbers rather than platform strength or brand loyalty. Many found Wear OS itself to be decent, if not mediocre at best, while the hardware it ran on was considered to be a few steps behind the competition like the Apple Watch or Samsung's Tizen-based Galaxy Watches. This year may see a resurgence of interest in Google's wearable platform, and Qualcomm is losing no time to say that it will be a driving force behind that renaissance.

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Smartwatches naturally have fewer hardware resources than their smartphone partners, but Wear OS smartwatches have been unpopular for having rather mediocre hardware in comparison to other platforms. That is particularly true with the processor that most vendors use, with technologies dating back to 2018 or older. The upcoming Wear OS attempts to break away from that bold, but its first incarnation might be taking things even farther. If these latest leaks are correct, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 could be one of the most powerful smartwatches yet.

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OnePlus was plunged into the center of controversy again these past few days after something that would have flown under most people's radars. Very few owners of the new OnePlus 9 Pro had complaints about the phone's performance, at least not until some decided to compare it with its peers. The revelation and OnePlus' own admission that it was indeed throttling some apps for the sake of battery life and thermal management have become almost similar to the benchmarking cheating it got accused of a few years back. The company has now made a more official and detailed defense of that practice that makes a somewhat ironic point about the smartphone market's obsession with specs and figures.

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Smart device processor manufacturer Qualcomm and hardware brand ASUS revealed a new smartphone this week called EXP21. The device appears to be a relatively top-tier machine with all the best bits of the processor Qualcomm will put inside it. The proposition is that they're making a "Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders - Designed by ASUS." Qualcomm has a sign up page ready to roll for a device that is "coming soon", and they've made it clear that "Snapdragon Insiders will be the first to be notified."

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OnePlus seems to have an obsession with battery life and power efficiency. For the longest time, it held off implementing a rather common Always-on Display feature for those reasons and only moved the needle forward when its community voted for it. Even so, OnePlus has always cautioned users about the consequences of such features and gave them the freedom to do what they want at their own expense. With the latest drama surrounding the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro, however, the company is making the exact same arguments, but this time isn't giving users the option to opt out of its throttling mechanism.

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Samsung has a big event scheduled in a month or so, but not everyone might be that interested in its new foldable phones. Some might have been more excited over the Galaxy S21 FE, but the signs are pointing to disappointing changes ahead that go beyond just delays. The "Fan Edition" of Samsung's flagship line might not make it until October at the earliest, and it might not even come with one important feature that those prospective buyers might be expecting.

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Qualcomm has announced the new Snapdragon 888 Plus 5G Mobile Platform, which is a follow-up to its flagship Snapdragon 888. Qualcomm says its new 888 Plus 5G flagship provides high-end intelligent entertainment along with AI-enhanced gameplay, streaming, photography, and more. The platform has all Snapdragon Elite Gaming features.

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Google has taken users of its smartwatch platform on an adventure these past few weeks. It dangled the promise of what could be the biggest update to Wear OS yet but then opted to remain mum on any update plans until later this year. Smartwatch makers didn't help matters by being just as ambiguous about updating existing smartwatches to what is now unofficially dubbed Wear OS 3.0. Qualcomm has tried to remove doubts about the capability of its Snapdragon Wear chipsets to run this upgraded experience. Still, Google itself may have doused some cold water on that again by implying it might not be the case.

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Excitement over the next major iteration of Wear OS was tempered by the most important question of all, "will it run on my smartwatch?" Unfortunately, Google's official statement is to wait for its official statement, and manufacturers other than Fossil have been ambiguous about their commitment to current Wear OS smartwatches in the market. That has, in turn, raised questions about the upcoming Wear OS's hardware requirements, which Qualcomm is now settling by saying that even its nearly three-year-old Snapdragon Wear 3100 platform is capable of running Wear OS 3.0.

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Wear OS smartwatches are a dime a dozen but, unfortunately, most of them are running on rather old hardware. Majority of those, including ones launched just last year, are still using Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear 3100 chipset that debuted way back in 2018. The chipmaker does have one updated wearable platform but so far only Mobvoi has been using it in the TicWatch Pro 3. Now it seems that it will have a companion and Mobvoi is once again taking the lead with the TicWatch E3.

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There's a new notebook on the market from Samsung called the Samsung Galaxy Book Go. This device has a 14-inch TFT FHD display (1920 x 1080 pixels), Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 compute platform (CPU), and Qualcomm Adreno GPU. The most enticing bit about this piece of hardware is the prospect of using it as an entertainment machine, given its relatively low price ($349) and Dolby Atmos speakers.

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OnePlus has been trying to diversify its products recently and not just by launching new devices like its first-ever smartwatch. Last year, it also introduced a new Nord series that seems poised to flood the budget and mid-range smartphone markets in the US and elsewhere. All throughout, however, OnePlus has solidly been a Qualcomm smartphone house as far as the processors that it uses go. It might be planning to diversify that as well as leaks about a OnePlus phone powered by MediaTek's Dimensity 5G chipset continue to arrive.

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