For Wear OS, Qualcomm has produced three generations of chipsets – Snapdragon Wear 2100 that arrived in 2016 and then came the Snapdragon Wear 3100 couple of years later with an additional co-processor. Both of these chips were a bit under-powered and in mid-2020 came the major overhaul in the form of Snapdragon Wear 4100 and 4100+ SoC. But to date only two smartwatches by Mobvoi have used the latest chipset. Now an exciting announcement by Qualcomm brings fresh hope for this hardware-software ballet.
At the Google I/O 2021, it was made clear that Wear OS was slated to receive a major update this fall. Now, Qualcomm has also confirmed that their newer Snapdragon 4100 powered chipsets, as well as, the older Wear 3100 chip will be able to handle whatever Wear OS 3.0 throws at them.
In an interaction with XDA Developers, Qualcomm confirmed this fact – a major relief for last-generation smartwatch owners who can look forward to running the latest Wear OS software. Although it has to be kept in mind, the decision to update existing watches rests with Google and the smartwatch makers.
Fossil has already said, they won’t be updating their current smartwatches (like the Fossil Gen 5E) to the new Wear OS version. Mobvoi is also unclear at this point whether they’ll be updating the TicWatch Pro 3 GPS or TicWatch E3.
One thing is for sure, smartwatch makers like Samsung and Fitbit will be updating their watch software to the latest available version of Wear OS. Samsung is expected to reveal more on the next Wear OS for its smartwatches at the MWC 2021 showcase.
Quite a significant number of Wear OS devices have launched in the last few months and it is justified they get the update. After all, a buyer makes the purchase decision based on the hardware and most of all the software experience with their gadgets for years to come!
