Qualcomm’s New Wearable Chip is For Kids Watches, Runs Special Version of Android

Qualcomm announced its new watch platform this week, the Snapdragon Wear 2500. No, this isn’t the new flagship chip we expect to arrive this fall to try and revive Wear OS, but it is important if you have kids. It’s also the first since the Snapdragon Wear 2100 arrived more than two years ago.

Snapdragon Wear 2500 was designed to offer longer battery life and connectivity, so that you can always keep track of your kids. Qualcomm also wants these new Wear 2500 kids watches to help in learning and growing, as well as staying fit.

To do that, Qualcomm is shipping some sort of “optimized version of Android for kids.” There are little details surrounding what that means other than it’s based on Android Oreo, but no where does their press release state that this is Wear OS. As far as we can tell, this is a custom skin of Android for kids watches. (We’ve reached out to both Qualcomm and Google for clarification on what this version of Android is.)

As for the the 2500, it’s based on a quad-core A7 processor with an Adreno GPU, supports 5MP cameras and NFC, and includes voice assistant support.

Huawei is one of the first partners that plans to introduce a Snapdragon Wear 2500 device, but there are others working on them as well. The 2500 development kit arrives in Q3 of this year, so it might be a while before we see a watch you can buy for your child.

// Qualcomm