Snapdragon

For almost three quarters straight, MediaTek has managed to wrest the crown from Qualcomm in the mobile application processor (AP) market. Part of its winning strategy is to throw everything it has on a wall and see which ones stick, mostly targeting mid-range phones in both 5G and LTE categories. Qualcomm, of course, hasn't been absent there, and its upcoming Snapdragon 600 series chips are clearly its latest attempt to reclaim its throne in that mid-tier market, especially when it comes to gaming.

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There is plenty of positive pre-release talk about the Exynos 2200, especially its performance, but that might all be for naught when launch day arrives. That's because the availability of devices using this much-awaited AMD-powered mobile chipset could be severely limited to the point of being absent even in Samsung's hometown. That said, there are some markets and key players that seem to be negotiating with Samsung on the matter, and the US might eventually see an Exynos variant of the Galaxy S22, at least from a single network operator.

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Despite its aggressive push in getting its own HarmonyOS and revamped EMUI skin to a large number of its current phones, Huawei may still be in trouble as far as making new devices go. It is crippled in its ability to buy the latest and greatest mobile processors from Qualcomm as well as making its own Kirin silicon. Huawei, however, is fond of finding loopholes and workarounds, and its latest strategy might be to simply drop 5G from the Snapdragon 778G and the upcoming Snapdragon 898 that it will be buying from Qualcomm.

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The launch of the Galaxy Watch 4 also brought with it a new Exynos chip designed for wearable devices. Built on a 5nm process, the Exynos W920 promises to be the most powerful and most energy-efficient platform for smartwatches today, though it is only available for Samsung smartwatches anyway. Qualcomm is expected to fire back soon with a Snapdragon Wear 5100, but, based on new yet unofficial information, it could end up being a bit of a dud in at least one aspect.

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Bluetooth audio has been around for years, but it has seen a significant increase in use thanks to Apple's initiative to remove headphone jacks in smartphones. Unfortunately, Bluetooth headphones, especially tiny earbuds, still lack some of the quality audio performance that wired headsets deliver. Apple has been working on fixing that situation with support for lossless audio in Apple Music, and now Qualcomm is doing the same for the general population with the new aptX Lossless feature coming soon to Snapdragon Sound certified smartphones and audio accessories.

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While mobile processors are still playing the numbers game when it comes to clock speeds, there is also an undercurrent that is putting some emphasis on the system-on-chip's graphical capabilities. Part of that may be driven by the still-growing mobile gaming market, and part of it is due to the increasing sophistication of mobile user interfaces. There is some excitement and curiosity around Samsung's use of AMD Radeon graphics technology for its upcoming Exynos 2200 chip, but Qualcomm naturally won't take matters sitting down and might be priming the Snapdragon 895 to face that head-on.

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It seems that Wear OS market players are finally starting to come together to push the smartwatch market as a more coherent force. Google's Wear OS 3 release might force smartwatch makers to finally upgrade their hardware to meet the software's requirements, while component makers like Qualcomm and Samsung are stepping up their game to meet that upcoming demand. While it still has barely any users, Qualcomm might already be preparing the Snapdragon Wear 4100's successor, at least based on the chip maker's own source code.

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Qualcomm's branding for Snapdragon chips doesn't always make sense. The Snapdragon 810 was succeeded by the 820/821, but that was followed by the 835, in turn. After the Snapdragon 865, however, came the 888, with the 870 following not far behind. In that light, there's still some debate whether the next Qualcomm premium chip will be the Snapdragon 895 or 898, but regardless of its name, it will have one upgrade that could set the tone for next year's smartphones.

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The choice of processors has always been one of the biggest criticisms of the smartwatch market, particularly with Android Wear, now Wear OS. Even today, most models run on very old silicon, even while a newer option has been available for almost a year now. Better late than never, as they say, and OPPO is finally catching up with the OPPO Watch 2, the third smartwatch to run on the latest Snapdragon Wear 4100 platform.

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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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