Qualcomm Brings AI to Smarwatches With New Snapdragon Wear Elite Chip

Qualcomm has introduced Snapdragon Wear Elite, its newest chip for wearables under the Elite branding. This chip brings a dedicated NPU for the first time, which should enable AI features on smartwatches and other wearables.

The system on a chip is built for next-generation flagship WearOS smartwatches and emerging AI wearables such as smart pins and pendants. It supports both Android and Linux.

Performance and Architecture

Snapdragon Wear Elite is manufactured on a 3nm process and uses a five-core CPU setup. The configuration includes one prime core clocked at 2.1GHz and four performance cores running at 1.9GHz, along with a dedicated co-processor.

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Compared to the previous Snapdragon W5+ Gen 2 platform, Qualcomm says the new chip delivers five times higher CPU performance, up to seven times improved GPU performance, and up to 30% longer battery life.

Agentic AI on Smartwatches

For the first time in the Wear series, the platform also includes a dedicated Hexagon NPU. The NPU is rated at 12 TOPS and supports models with up to 2 billion parameters. It is designed to enable more advanced on-device AI processing for agentic AI assistants.

Connectivity and Charging

Snapdragon Wear Elite supports 5G RedCap, aimed at reducing latency and improving battery efficiency. It also adds support for NB-NTN to maintain connectivity in areas without standard cellular networks.

Other supported connectivity standards include Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 6.0, NFC, Ultra-Wideband, and dual-band GNSS positioning. While the platform supports all these features, manufacturers can source versions of the chip with selected features removed.

The platform also supports fast charging. Qualcomm states that devices using Snapdragon Wear Elite can reach 50% charge in under 10 minutes.

Availability

Devices powered by Snapdragon Wear Elite are expected in the coming months. Samsung, Google, and Motorola are among the companies preparing products based on the new chip.