Qualcomm Officially Unveils its Snapdragon W5+ Gen 2 and W5 Gen 2 Platforms, Featuring the NB-NTN Satellite Support
The American semi-conductor brand – Qualcomm has now unveiled two new 2nd generation smartwatch platforms: Snapdragon W5+ Gen 2 and Snapdragon W5 Gen 2. Both of these have been introduced as the world’s first platforms to support NB-NTN satellite messaging support.
Read more about the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon platforms below.
Snapdragon W5+ Gen 2 and Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 – Officially Unveiled
Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon W5+ Gen 2 and Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 chips have been officially unveiled with improved GPS accuracy, and the two will be capable of offering smartwatch devices/power-efficient devices with an enhanced as well as superior performance. These latest Snapdragon chips have 4nm process nodes (main AP), whereas the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 2 additionally has 22nm coprocessor process nodes too. Audio/WiFi/GNSS lower power islands and RBSC/TWM/Deep Sleep/Hibernate lower power states are also part of them, and best-in-class LTE standby and VoLTE supports are given.
About their architecture, the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 2 has 4x A53 cores and 1x M55 (250MHz) core, while the Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 only equips 4x A53 cores. On the GPU side, A702 (1GHz) GPU is integrated on the two. To add, a 2.5D GPU has also been additionally added onto the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 2 chip. The LPDDR4 (2133 MHz) RAM support has been given on the two as well, while the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 2 comes with U55 machine learning too.
Notably, the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 2 and the Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 chips are the very first platforms to support the NB-NTN (Narrowband Non-Terrestrial Networks) connection, which will enable users to transmit and receive emergency messages via satellite when in areas without cellular or WiFi connectivity. Moreover L1+L5 Location ML 3.0 GNSS, dual ISP EIS3.0 camera, and Bluetooth v5.3 QHS are supported on the two. Display, sensors, notifications, and audio features that can be put into use in off-road scenarios have also been given on the Snapdragon W5+ Gen 2 platform.
