At this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon Wear Elite, a personal AI platform to unlock personal, always-on, intelligent wearable computing devices.

Personal AI devices will be a critical layer of the intelligent network for the AI era and Snapdragon Wear Elite works across Google’s Wear OS, Android and Linux with an NPU for on-device AI and suite of low-power connectivity options.

“Snapdragon is transforming personal computing by enabling a new category of personal AI devices,” said Alex Katouzian, executive vice president at Qualcomm (www.qualcomm.com). “Spanning a broad range of form factors, these devices are no longer simply extensions of the smartphone, but active participants in a distributed AI network across mobile, compute, XR, wearables and more. Snapdragon Wear Elite delivers powerful edge AI with an integrated NPU architecture and advanced sensor processing, enabling true, personal AI experiences.”

By integrating the Qualcomm Hexagon NPU to support up to a billion‑parameter models at the edge, and pairing it with sensor fusion, low-power connectivity and computing, Snapdragon Wear Elite enables personal AI experiences, including context‑aware recommendations, natural voice interactions, life logging and AI agents that can take actions and orchestrate tasks on users’ behalf.

It is backed by fivefold improvement in single-core CPU performance and up to seven times faster GPU for app launching, multitasking and smoother rendering.

Additionally, the platform supports multi-day battery life, reducing charging sessions, while power management enables 30% longer day of use compared with the previous generation. When recharging is needed, rapid charging powers a device up to 50% in approximately ten minutes.

The platform introduces a multi‑mode connectivity architecture integrating 5G RedCap, Micro-Power wifi, Bluetooth 6.0, UWB, GNSS and NB-NTN. Partners supporting the platform include Google, Motorola and Samsung.

“With Wear OS, we are reimagining the smartwatch experience and moving from an operating system to an always-with-you intelligent system that understands and works for you,” said Bjørn Kilburn from Google (www.google.com). “The Snapdragon Wear Elite platform opens new possibilities, delivering the performance, battery life and connectivity essential for the next generation of Wear OS.”

Francois LaFlamme, vice president at Motorola (www.motorola.com), added: “The shift towards personal AI depends on a foundation that can balance on‑device intelligence, sensing, connectivity and more efficient compute, so these devices can move with you, learn from you and support more intuitive interactions throughout the day.”

And InKang Song, executive vice president at Samsung (www.samsung.com), said: “By integrating the new Snapdragon Wear Elite platform, the next-generation Galaxy Watch will be an even more holistic wellness companion. This marks an important step in our ongoing efforts to deliver more efficient and personalised experiences, right from your wrist.”

The first commercial devices powered by Snapdragon Wear Elite are expected to be available in the next few months.