News
Qualcomm launches Snapdragon Wear 3100 for wearables
What you should know about Qualcomm’s latest chip for wearables
After two years, Qualcomm has finally unveiled a new chip for wearables and it’s looking like the future.
Snapdragon Wear 3100, announced earlier today in San Francisco, is “designed to allow consumers to enjoy the beauty of a fashion watch with the power of a smartwatch, the battery life of a sports watch with the richness of a smartwatch, and the utility of an analog watch with the flexibility of a smartwatch.” Just how does it attempt to do all that? Well…
It’s built for smartwatches
Snapdragon Wear 3100 features new architecture that boasts high-performance quad-core A7 processors. In so many words, expect this chip to be highly efficient for your next smartwatch experience. Which brings me to the next point:
It will stretch your battery power
Designed specifically for wearables, Wear 3100 adds four to twelve hours of active use (compared to the previous Wear 2100) and can bring you a total of 1.5 to 2.5 days of battery time.
There are new smartwatch modes
For those who like stylish but capable smartwatches, Wear 3100 offers a new Enhanced Ambient Mode with smooth second-hand movement and brighter colors. This new chip allows for 20 times less power when animating that second hand, something most watch faces have omitted because it drains battery power. There’s also a Dedicated Sports Experiences mode for the adrenaline junkies which promises 15 hours of continuous GPS and heart rate monitoring, and a Traditional Watch Mode with a week-long battery capability.
More Wear 3100 smartwatches are coming!
Montblanc has announced that the Summit 2, coming out in October, will be powered by this new chip. According to Qualcomm, this luxury watch brand together with Fossil Group and Louis Vuitton are the first Wear 3100 customers, so expect smarter smartwatches from those brands soon.
Because different manufacturers will have different smartwatch implementations when it comes to Wear 3100 devices, it’s a little too early to tell which watches to look out for. One thing’s for sure, though: Qualcomm stepped up the wearables game and now the ball has left their court.
Finance
HONOR, Fidesmo partner for contactless payments across Europe, Middle East
Enabling contactless payments on the HONOR Watch 6
HONOR and Fidesmo have partnered to launch contactless payments across Europe and the Middle East on the HONOR Watch 6.
Powered by Fidesmo Pay, the integration enables users to connect an existing Mastercard or Visa card to their watch and complete contactless transactions directly from the wearable device.
This brings Fidesmo’s network of over 900 banks and financial institutions to HONOR’s customers. Users can connect an existing card to the HONOR Watch 6 instantly through the HONOR Health App, which installs a unique token directly onto the watch.
Acting as a secure reference to the payment method, this token allows customers to pay without storing their actual payment details on the device. Once installed, users can tap the watch at any
contactless terminal to pay, just as they would with a card or phone.
HONOR joins a group of device partners that already includes Swatch, Polar, and Mondaine as Fidesmo continues to build momentum across categories.
Entertainment
Max vs 100 will feature Max Verstappen race against 100 go-karters
The live event will stream at midnight on September 17.
As a child, one of my favorite thought experiments is to imagine who would win in a fight between my favorite characters at the time and a number of other random beings. For example, will Superman prevail against 100 Magnetos? Those are the ways I kept my young mind occupied. Now, as a former child, I still do the same thing but with more realistic people, like imagining if Steph Curry can win against 100 high schoolers. This week, ESPN and Disney+ are making one of those imaginary fights real: Formula 1 legend Max Verstappen versus 100 go-karters.
In an upcoming live event streaming exclusively on Disney+, Max vs 100 will pit the four-time world champion against 100 go-karters from everywhere in pop culture. This gaggle of 100 will include popular content creators such as Twitch streamer ExtraEmily, car photographer Larry Chen, and NBA shooting coach Chris Matthews.
All 101 drivers will race around one of the most iconic tracks in Formula 1 history, Silverstone in England. The track will be reconfigured to match the special race.
Of course, this is more than just a parade of go-karts. Max Verstappen will start at the back of the grid, meaning he has to overtake all 100 racers to win. Now, the Dutch driver is no stranger to winning from the back. In 2024, he won the Sao Paulo Grand Prix despite starting from P17 (out of 20 racers). Max vs 100, though familiar for the driver, presents a different challenge. Can he overtake 100 times to win the race?
Max vs 100 will stream live through Disney+ on September 17, 12:00am PHT.
Apps
Apple’s best feature to cure motion sickness is finally on Android
Google copies a good page from Apple’s playbook.
As an Android user, I’ve been jealous of iPhone users for a while now, but it’s not for the reason you might think. See, I’m ridiculously prone to motion sickness when I’m not driving. So, when I discovered that Apple has a software-based cure called Vehicle Motion Cues, I wanted it immediately. Now, Android does have third-party apps that do the same thing, but they’re not as good as a fully native version. Well, those dark, nauseating days are about to come to an end. Android 17 is finally getting a similar tool called Motion assist.
Before that, let’s rewind for a bit. What do these features do? How can they cure motion sickness?
Whenever you open Vehicle Motion Cues or Motion assist, the interface spawns a series of dots on the screen. These dots respond to movement. For example, if the vehicle turns to the left, the dots also go to the left, mimicking the movement. Without cues like this, the stationary nature of the screen clashes with our brain’s perception of movement. The disparity creates that feeling of nausea. Basically, our eyes are desperately trying to focus on the static screen, but our brains are telling us that we should be seeing motion. Having moving dots reorients our brain and places the phone inside our perception of movement.
Now, you can enable the same feature on your Android 17 device through Settings > All services > Motion assist under Personal & device safety. You can also set it so that the feature turns on automatically when the phone detects that you’re in a moving vehicle. Finally, you can also tweak the shape, color, and opacity of these dots.
Android 17’s Motion assist is rolling out now to compatible devices.
SEE ALSO: These are the best Android 17 features (if you hate AI)
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