Qualcomm Develops Snapdragon Wear 2500 To Power Kids' Smartwatches

It's been quite a while since Qualcomm announced a new SoC aimed primarily at the wearables/smartphone market, and today the company is launching the Snapdragon Wear 2500 platform. Unlike the previous Snapdragon Wear 2100, this new platform is being targeted primarily at smartwatches designed for children.

Snapdragon Wear 2500 has integrated 4G LTE connectivity along with all the supporting tech that device makers will need to build smartwatches for kiddos. Wearables for kids do have traditional smartwatch features integrated into them like smartphone connectivity and in some cases, they can act as a smartphone themselves for making calls. The big feature that many parents want is the ability to track kids for safety reasons.

While Apple is seen as one of the only bright spots in the traditional smartwatch market, the growth of child trackers is "seeing extraordinary growth" according to CCS Insight analyst Geoff Blaber. The market is expected to grow rapidly with predictions suggesting 31.5 million child tracking wearables will ship and Qualcomm wants to take advantage of that massive market.

The Snapdragon Wear 2500 Platform wraps 4G LTE connectivity in with a quad-core A7 processor and there is an integrated sensor sub with pre-optimized algorithms and low power location tracking. Qualcomm also wrapped support for a 5MP camera and AI helpers like Alexa and the Google Assistant. Integrated NFC lets kids pay for purchases or use transit cards without having to deal with a card.

A tailored version of Android specifically for kids' wearables runs the show based on Android O. Internal memory is 512MB and the entire platform is designed for low power operation. Power is saved by disabling capabilities not needed. Qualcomm says that the power optimization means the wearables will last about four days per charge. We talked recently about another rumored smartwatch platform from Qualcomm called Snapdragon Wear 3100 tipped to power the high-end Google Pixel Wear smartwatch expected to launch this fall.
In other Qualcomm news, the company unveiled the Snapdragon 429, 439, and 632 that are aiming directly at mainstream smartphones.