Qualcomm has announced its new 2500 platform, a chipset series for use in 4G smartwatches made specifically for kids.
What is it?
While we don’t often see children use smartwatches in Canada, Qualcomm says kid-friendly smartwatches targeting four to ten-year-olds have a large audience in Asian countries, especially China.
In comparison to the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100, the company’s previous heavy duty wearable platform, the 2500 is 38 percent smaller and up to 14 percent more power efficient, due to it being more properly tailored to hardware and software — which means battery life gets an extension.
To further help with power saving settings, the chipset shuts off capabilities that are not needed.
The watch will fit the whole Android Wear experience in 512MB, allowing developers to add more content into the watches. Further, it has a 5th gen LTE modem which is pre-certified at 100 carriers.
New features
One of the most interesting features is how the Qualcomm chipset uses location services.
The platform uses GPS alongside the watch’s accelerometer and gyroscope to pinpoint locations. Using the chipset, the watch will first triangulate its location with GPS, then use the accelerometer and gyroscope to predict exactly the speed and direction of the watch. According to Qualcomm, this will help the watch save battery when location services are turned on.
Additionally, the new chipset supports a 5-megapixel camera and will allow these smartwatches to video call, take pictures, as well as add filters and stickers to images, which children can also share via the smartwatch.
Like other smartwatches, the 2500 lets kids speak to voice-activated assistants, such as Google and Siri. With Google Assistant and Siri, kids can now have their watches tell them interactive stories and help children learn new languages.
The 2500 also gets NFC support, which Qualcomm built in so children can load their transit passes onto their smartwatches — a feature, unfortunately, that’s not widely available in Canada.
The platform also integrates an ‘ultra-low’ power sensor hub. These sensor can be used to tell the kid to stay active, as well as, sending information back to the parents so they can monitor their health. The platform further supports gesture-based gaming and entertainment applications, allowing kids to have fun on the move.
Huawei partners with Qualcomm
Huawei will be the first company to create a 4G kids smartwatch using the Snapdragon Wear 2500 platform.
Qualcomm is working with Intrinsyc to create a development kit based on the Snapdragon platform. This will be available in the third quarter of 2018 and will allow more developers to create software for upcoming kid watches.
For an idea of a Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear platform in use, check out the LG GizmoPal 2 sold at Verizon.
While no devices using the kid-friendly 2500 platform have been announced just yet, hopefully some manufacturers will bring the technology to Canada.
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