Qualcomm's next-gen smartwatch SoC is now rumored to be called the Snapdragon Wear 3300

Smartwatches are increasingly accepted as useful and engaging accessories that can be an alternative to phones in some situations. However, those released with Google's OS designed for these devices has not quite caught on in the way the same for smart TVs and TV boxes has. This may be due to a range of factors, battery life often emerging as chief among them.

Qualcomm has made an effort to address this through the development of the Snapdragon Wear series of processors, which the company markets as tailored to smartwatches and their need for efficiency in some specific areas, power use included. Nevertheless, wearables with even the latest of these SoCs (the 3100) have been observed to lag behind those from OEMs that integrate their own processors, software or both in their smartwatches.

The next generation of Qualcomm's wearable platform may help change that. The latest leak on this subject supports a prior rumor that it is based on the 12-nanometer (nm) Snapdragon 429 chipset (as opposed to the 28nm architecture found in the 3100). However, it now seems that the resulting new processor is to be called the 3300, and not the 2700 as previously thought.

This new indication is derived from possible evidence found on the Code Aurora Forum, where Qualcomm logs its Linux kernel sources. It specifically refers to a "SDW3300", which in subsequent lines of code is linked to the "sdm429-spyro" in its device tree, "Spyro" being the 429's code-name.

Therefore, it is possible that the resulting Snapdragon Wear 3300 could run at a max of 2.0 gigahertz (GHz), support Bluetooth 5.0, improved eMMC 5.1 storage and 64-bit apps. On the other hand, it seems next-gen smartwatches based thereon will not see the RAM spec boost that could benefit the category at this stage: the tree also appears to cater for 1GB devices only.