Qualcomm Unveils Snapdragon Wearable Platform Elite Edition, Samsung's Next-Gen Galaxy Watch to Debut as First Adopter

Qualcomm officially launched the Snapdragon Wear Elite Platform at MWC on March 2nd. Designed for AI-powered wearables such as smartwatches and pendants, the platform debuts a dedicated eNPU, enabling on-device inference of 2-billion-parameter models with a time-to-first-token of just 0.2 seconds. Its penta-core CPU delivers a 5x performance boost over the previous generation, while the GPU offers a 7x increase. Battery life for daily use is extended by 30 percent, and a 10-minute charge provides up to 50 percent power. Samsung's Executive Vice President InKang Song confirmed that the next-generation Galaxy Watch series will be powered by the new chip, with the premium Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 likely to be the debut model.