Smart Watch II – Qualcomm?

Qualcomm’s Toq is a reference design that was fun to build.   

• It would seem that Qualcomm is moving into the world of consumer devices with the launch of a smartwatch but closer inspection reveals that this is really a reference design to showcase a number of technologies that the company has developed.
• Hence there will only be one product run with less than 100,000 units being made.
• It looks a lot nicer than Samsung’s effort and makes use of a low power Mirasol display and a low power Qualcomm processor which together deliver up to 5 days of battery life.
• Qualcomm has also managed to squeeze in wireless charging so there is no need for a cumbersome charging port.
• The idea behind this watch is two fold.
  • First. To act as a reference design for other manufacturers who want to build a smart watch and don’t know where to start.
  • Second. To demonstrate a use case some of the technologies that Qualcomm has been developing in house that go beyond chipsets.
  • Top of the list is Mirasol, which is a screen technology that Qualcomm acquired many years ago.
  • It aims to reduce power consumption by reflecting ambient light through the display meaning that much less power is needed to read the screen in bright sunlight.
  • This was originally designed for mobile phones in sunny countries but it never really took off mainly because Qualcomm was unsuccessful in convincing handset makers to adopt it.
  • A smart watch is a good place for another try at this, as space for a battery is very limited which increases the desirability of power saving technologies.
  • That assumes that smart watches will take off which I think is open to serious debate at the moment.
• This project was also CEO Paul Jacob’s pet project where he personally worked on number of iterations of Toq before coming up with this version.
• It seems that once you are an engineer, you are always an engineer even if you become CEO.
• Given the value that Paul Jacobs has delivered to shareholders since taking over from his father, I think he has earned a little R&R.