Qualcomm Releases New Wearable SoC With Built-In LTE

Watches with LTE connections may be just around the corner with Qualcomm officially launching the a new SoC with a built-in LTE connection.

The Snapdragon Wear 2100, an SoC built specially for wearables is 30 percent smaller than the Snapdragon 400 which is used in products like the second-generation Moto 360. The company also claims that the Wear 2100 also uses 25 percent less power, perhaps allowing for Android Wear watches to get slightly smaller.

While we’re not sure how soon these chips will start making its way into wearables, it’s very likely that we may see some wearables get LTE connections sometime this year.

One of the biggest complains many have had with products like the Apple Watch is that connections can be quite slow since the Watch has to pull data by talking to a nearby iPhone via Bluetooth. If the Apple Watch and other wearables can pull information without having to rely on a nearby smartphone, we could see a dramatically increase in performance and user satisfaction.

Here’s hoping that the second-generation Apple Watch also has LTE.