In the smart wearable track, millet end of the year again. This time there is not only the best "cost-effective", but also the industry's first new features.
December 11th millet WatchS2 officially released, and will be opened on December 14th at a price of 999 from the first sale. Because of the product features, the netizen said "and save the money to buy a body fat scale".
Xiaomi WatchS2 built-in bioelectrical impedance sensor, as long as the watch is normally worn on the wrist, the other hand will be two fingers on the side of the watch, you can carry out the body composition measurement, the eight body data in real time to view, to fully grasp their own health status.
According to the tide of electricity think tank from the industry chain to understand, millet WatchS2 can succeed in the industry debut of this new function, because equipped with the core sea technology (688595.SZ) of high-precision biosensing AFE chip CS1253.
More than just a smartwatch, from the cooperation in 2017 to date, the core sea technology self-researched a variety of chips have been widely used in millet's terminal products such as pen drives, TWS, and body fat scales, and is an important partner for Xiaomi to build its AIoT ecosystem.
"Xiaomi's success has never been separated from its strong supply chain resource support." Liang Liang, an expert in the smartwatch industry, believes that the same is true for its smartwatches.
Millet watch rushes to the top three
In the personal consumption three-piece set, compared to the smartphone and TWS, which have entered the global top three, Xiaomi's expansion for the smartwatch is relatively lagging behind the point of time. Strictly speaking, millet smartwatches are only starting to make an impact from 2020.
Xiaomi told Tide Power Intelligence that 2021 is a major milestone in the development of the company's watch products, and its RedmiWatch2, XiaomiWatchColor2, XiaomiWatchS1 and other new products with different styles of combinations have been loved by many Mi users.
According to Chaodian Intelligence, Xiaomi smartwatch sales climbed rapidly in the first quarter of this year, and ranked fourth with a market share of 6% in the global brand TOP10.
But because of the epidemic flood, consumption downgrade and other factors, the second quarter of this year, millet smart watch sales of 540,000, ranking in the brand camp back to eighth place.
Rapid product updating and iteration is a major feature of the consumer electronics industry, and is the nuclear power to drive the market forward. In September this year, Apple and Huawei have released new watch products one after another. A domestic smartwatch ODM manufacturer executives Long said, according to millet's habitual way of playing, is bound to be fully prepared to meet the battle, so there is reason to have more expectations of the market prospects of S2.
Xiaomi is actually one of the pioneering brands in the wearable field, releasing its first smart bracelet as early as 2014 and reaching a cumulative 100 million wearable device shipments in 2019.
Industry views generally believe that, in terms of form and function, the smart watch is an advanced version of the smart bracelet, both belonging to the smart wristband wearable series.
"Wearable terminals are an important part of the millet AIoT ecology, so the smartwatch to enter the global brand sales of the top three, must be millet's 'small goal'." Bright believes that with Xiaomi's brand and R&D strength, it is not difficult to make a good smartwatch. And its "cost-effective" killer, that is, low price, high performance market strategy, will bring a new impact on the industry, so that the product is more pro-people.
CoreSea CS1253 demystified
On Nov. 17, CoreSea's CS1253 chip stood out among 334 entries from 227 outstanding companies nationwide, and was honored to be on the list of "China's Core" outstanding technological innovation products.
It is important to note that the "China Chip" award is an authoritative industry event guided by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China (MIIT) and organized by the China Electronics and Information Industry Development Research Institute (CIEIDRI). The awarding of CS1253 is the seventh time since 2007, and the third time in a row since 2019, that the company has been honored as a "China Chip".
The CS1253 is an analog front-end (AFE) chip that supports bio-impedance measurements for wearable devices, which, combined with the human body composition algorithm, enables high-precision human body composition analysis, according to Tidal Wave Intelligence. The product internally integrates a bioimpedance measurement circuit (BIM) and a high-precision Sigma-delta ADC signal chain. The BIM circuit uses a sinusoidal excitation source to convert the bio-impedance into a voltage signal and send it to the ADC signal chain for measurement, which can support multi-frequency bio-impedance measurement.
Benefiting from the innovative breakthroughs in semiconductor and sensor technologies, smart wearable health measurement devices, as an extension of traditional hospital-use medical devices, have been widely used and rapidly developed in the health measurement consumer market segment by virtue of product advantages such as wearing comfort, instant detection and non-invasive monitoring.
Technical experts from CoreTech said that the CS1253 chip is an industry leader in accuracy, integration, low power consumption, ease of use, and other aspects of the indicators, which is very suitable for smart wearable application scenarios.
Not only that, with the deployment of 5G communications in the country, the Internet of Things, especially artificial intelligence + Internet of Things is expected to achieve rapid development, including smart phones, smart wear, smart home, new energy vehicles and other segments will significantly increase the demand for smart sensors. Therefore, as an indispensable basic hardware in the era of information interconnection and intelligent perception, the sensor chip market space will be further expanded.
In previous years, the industry was mainly dominated by the United States, Japan and European companies, the industry chain upstream and downstream supporting the maturity of the almost monopolized the "high, precise, sharp" smart sensor market.
At present, with the establishment of nearly 20 years of core sea technology as a stalwart representative of the R & D and application side of the continuous breakthroughs, domestic chip manufacturers are rapidly rising. Riding the wind of domestic substitution, the new pattern of the smart sensor market will be rewritten.
4nm process, stronger performance and power saving Qualcomm launched the first generation of Snapdragon W5/W5 + wearable platform
In the past five years, wearable devices ushered in the booming development of wearable devices, in addition to specialized wearable device brands, including Xiaomi, vivo, OPPO and other cell phone brands have also created their own wearable devices, and now the smartwatch is given more More functions, including motion detection, notification reminders and listening to music, etc. As smartwatches play a more important role in users' lives, higher requirements have been put forward for the battery life and performance of smartwatches.
Qualcomm in the launch of the Snapdragon 2100, 3100, 4100/4100 + wearable platform, today brought a new wearable platform, and a new naming system, which is the first generation of Snapdragon W5/W5 + wearable platform, the series is for the next generation of wearable devices to build, from the platform level on a comprehensive technical innovation, for the subsequent smart wearable devices with comprehensive performance and experience upgrades.
Built for long-lasting battery life
The first-generation Snapdragon W5+ wearable platform utilizes a hybrid architecture that includes a 4nm system-on-chip (SoC) and a 22nm highly-integrated always-on (AON) co-processor. With ultra-low power consumption, top performance, and high integration, future wearable devices can be thinner and more compact.
The first-generation Snapdragon W5+ wearable platform's large and small-core design allows for efficient task allocation. The large-core SoC is developed for the WearOS and AOSP operating systems, and will take on functions such as communications, LTE, and modem, as well as the running of a number of Android apps, including camera and RF processing tasks. The co-processor is based on the FreeRTOS system and integrates more functions, including display, motion health sensors, and audio processing and notification push.
The small and large cores are designed to better control power consumption issues, and commonly used functions are done through the coprocessor to avoid additional power waste. Meanwhile, the first-generation Snapdragon W5+ wearable platform also incorporates a low-power Bluetooth architecture, with a low-power co-processor controlling the Bluetooth 5.3 module, resulting in lower power consumption for connectivity.
In addition, the first generation Snapdragon W5+ wearable platform also integrates GPS, WiFi, audio and other modules into a low-power island,
powered these modules separately, so that when the user is using the GPS, our GPS module will power up and work, and when it is not in use, it will power down to avoid wasting power, and minimize the power consumption.
On this basis Qualcomm has also brought in the exclusive Deep Sleep and Hibernate working mechanisms. In deep sleep mode, all Android-related content is stored in RAM, and the big core is powered down. In this mode of operation, power consumption can be well controlled. In addition, it is also possible for Android content to enter hibernation mode, in which the overall power consumption will be less than 0.5mA.
According to Qualcomm's internal test data, the first-generation Snapdragon W5+ wearable platform's battery life has been improved by up to 50%, which can be considered a very significant improvement.
Strong performance brings more comprehensive function support
The first-generation Snapdragon W5/W5+ wearable platform also brings stronger performance performance, taking the flagship platform first-generation Snapdragon W5+ as an example, its SoC adopts a 1.7GHz quad-core CortexA53 architecture, supports LPDDR4X memory, 1GHz GPU, and supports a dual ISP camera design . The co-processor uses CortexM55 architecture with 2.5DGPU, has HiFi5DSP, and also integrates Bluetooth 5.3 as well as Wi-Fi module.
Meanwhile, a U55 core for machine learning is also integrated into the platform's coprocessor for algorithmic processing tasks for sensors, and based on the enhanced hybrid architecture, the smoothness of subsequent smart wearable devices will be greatly improved.
Smart devices based on the first-generation Snapdragon W5+ wearable platform will feature smooth video playback and two-way video calling, as well as new experiences in 3D map navigation, real-time image recognition, interactive voice assistants, and smart device control.
With many new enhancements, the first generation Snapdragon W5+ wearable platform offers 50 percent lower power consumption, two times higher performance, two times more features, and a 30 percent smaller size compared to its predecessor (the Snapdragon 4100+), providing a wider scope for subsequent device builds by end manufacturers.
New platform devices officially unveiled in August
Devices built on the first-generation Snapdragon W5/W5+ wearable platform will be unveiled in August, with OPPO refreshingly launching a Snapdragon W5 platform-based smartwatch, and Going Out asking for the debut of the Snapdragon W5+ wearable platform.
Li Kaixin, assistant vice president of OPPO and president of the IoT business group, said, "The release of the new Snapdragon W5 wearable platform elevates smart wearable technology to a whole new level.OPPO and Qualcomm Technologies have a long history of close collaboration that continues to create possibilities for product innovation.The OPPOWatch3 series will be released in August, as the first smartwatch equipped with Snapdragon W5 wearable platform, it will gain users' favor with even better performance."
Zhi Fei Li, CEO of GoDo, said, "Over the past few years, GoDo has partnered with Qualcomm Technologies to release a series of TicWatch smartwatch products powered by the Snapdragon Wearable Platform. Our team is excited about the differentiating features of the Snapdragon W5+ wearable platform and has worked closely with the Qualcomm Technologies team to bring these innovations to life in our next generation TicWatch flagship smartwatch. We look forward to releasing our latest product this fall, which will also be the first smartwatch product powered by the first-generation Snapdragon W5+ wearable platform."
Qualcomm Technologies also released two reference designs built by Compal Computer and PEGATRON respectively, demonstrating new platform features and collaboration with ecological partners to help customers accelerate the product development process, and the next launch of wearable devices is still very much anticipated.
When it comes to Samsung's smart device chips, many friends may first think of the Exynos1080 and Exynos2100 for smartphones, as well as the rumored Exynos2200, which will soon have a built-in AMDRDNA2 light-tracking GPU. but in fact, compared to the cell phone SoCs, which are not exactly outstanding in terms of product power, the Exynos family has a lot to offer in another way. Samsung's Exynos family is another area where it has, in turn, taken the absolute lead in technology and design so far.
And that's Samsung's Exynos family of smart wearables chips.
How strong are Exynos' wearable chips? Back in 2018, when the industry's dominant Qualcomm Wear2500 was still using the 32-bit Cortex-A7 architecture and an ancient 28nm process, Samsung launched a similar chip called the Exynos9110 in the same year.
The Exynos9110 uses Samsung's own 10nm process, and the CPU is based on the 64-bit Cortex-A53 architecture. And more importantly, compared to other wearable chips of the same period, which had to use a quad-core CPU design to boost performance because the architecture was too old, Samsung opted for the new architecture + dual-core idea, so not only is the performance not bad, but also has a very obvious power consumption advantage.
So, at that time, equipped with other wearable chip full intelligent watch battery life performance is generally about a day, some even can not reach the case, Samsung used the Exynos9110 full intelligent watch products, but the battery life can easily reach three days or even longer.
Note that this is still only Samsung Exynos wearable chip in three years ago level only. Because in recent days, Samsung launched a new generation of wearable chips - ExynosW920. when we will ExynosW920 and other smart watches on the market to compare the latest chip program, soon realized that Samsung this time and "kill"! "
First of all, the ExynosW920 is the first smartwatch that Samsung has ever made.
First of all, in terms of basic process and architecture, the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear4100, the latest wearable hardware platform on the market, uses a 12nm process and a quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU, a single-channel LPDDR3 RAM, and an Adreno 504 GPU. Wear2500/3100, which is already considered to be as much as five years of progress in one breath (the Wear3100 is based on the Snapdragon 400 from 2013, and the Wear4100 is based on the Snapdragon 429 from 2018).
By comparison, however, the ExynosW920 uses a 5nm EUV process, a Cortex-A55 CPU, LPDDR4 RAM, and ARM's Mali-G68 GPU that was released just last year.In other words, the ExynosW920 is at least two years ahead of its competitors' caliber in terms of architecture and process alone.
But for the ExynosW920, it's inherently free of that worry. On the one hand, it uses a much more advanced semiconductor process with a more power-efficient memory subsystem, and on the other hand, the ExynosW920 continues its predecessor's CPU design philosophy, which allows it to achieve near-quadruple-core performance with just a dual-core design, while dramatically lowering its power consumption by using a new, more energy-efficient architecture for the CPU.
In fact, compared to its own predecessor, the ExynosW920's CPU performance can be up to 120 percent of its predecessor, and its GPU performance has skyrocketed to 1,000 percent of its predecessor's performance, which shows the power of the advanced architecture and process.
ExynosW920 integrated Cortex-M55, than the Apollo4S chip architecture (Cortex-M4) used by OPPO advanced by three generations
More than that, in ExynosW920 Samsung even specially designed a co-processor core based on the Cortex-M55 low-power architecture. Its role is to "take over" computing tasks from the main CPU when the smartwatch is in the off-screen display state. In this way, smartwatches based on ExynosW920 will not need to have a built-in co-processor chip to achieve the same or even higher performance as other smartwatches that use a co-processor chip, and at the same time effectively simplify the design and further reduce the power consumption and cost of the product.
But that's not all. In fact, the ExynosW920 is not only extremely advanced in its own right, it also utilizes the latest fan-out panel level packaging (FO-PLP), which packages the SoC, memory, power management chip, and eMMC flash memory into a single chip. Compared to the traditional design of soldering different components onto the PCB, this package of ExynosW920 not only realizes shorter wiring and higher overall system performance, but also significantly saves the circuit board area of smart wearable devices. For devices like smartwatches, which have a lot of space inside, a smaller board means more room for the battery, which further improves the device's battery life.
Of course, from a consumer's perspective, we can expect that the ExynosW920 will help Samsung achieve amazingly low power consumption and long battery life on their latest smartwatch. At the same time, its extremely high GPU performance also means that it will be able to drive much higher resolution smartwatch display panels than in the past, thus effectively improving the display finesse of smartwatches, and even going so far as to enable certain special high-resolution wearable device designs - such as an entire flexible screen that surrounds the wrist, which is obviously not out of the question!
But from an industry observer's point of view, what we'd actually like to know is why Samsung can go ahead and aggressively use the latest processes, the latest architectures, and the latest packaging methods to make their wearable device chips when other manufacturers can't do the same?