The new platform promises a massive jump in performance, helping usher in the new era of AI hardware
Qualcomm has used MWC 2026 to unveil the Snapdragon Wear Elite, a high-end platform designed to transform wearables into more active participants in AI.
While the previous W5+ Gen 2 is being relegated to the ‘high’ tier, the Elite branding marks a new premium category for Qualcomm. The goal is to power an upcoming network of smartwatches, AI pins, and pendants that can process complex tasks locally rather than constantly tethering to a smartphone or the cloud.
The most significant technical shift is the inclusion of a dedicated Hexagon NPU (neural processing unit). This allows the chip to run billion-parameter AI models directly on the device at speeds of up to 10 tokens per second.
In practical terms, this enables real-time life logging, on-device transcription, and AI agents that can actually execute tasks across apps. Interestingly, Qualcomm has also moved away from the traditional co-processor architecture (largely credited with enabling multi-day battery life in the last generation of Android smartwatches).
This has been replaced with an eNPU or AI accelerator housed within a series of low-power ‘islands’. These islands manage always-on tasks like keyword detection and activity recognition with 30% better efficiency than the previous generation.
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On the raw performance side, the Snapdragon Wear Elite is built on a 3nm process and introduces a big.LITTLE architecture to the wrist for the first time.
It features a 2.1 GHz ‘big’ core to handle heavy lifting, such as app launches and multitasking, resulting in a 5x increase in single-core CPU performance. The Adreno GPU is also seeing a 7x improvement, which Qualcomm claims will finally bring smooth 60 FPS rendering to 1080p wearable displays.
Connectivity is equally robust, integrating UWB for digital key support and NB-NTN for two-way satellite messaging when cellular signals fail.
Landing first on the Samsung Galaxy Watch?
The platform has already secured backing from Google, Samsung, and Motorola.
Google has confirmed that the chip is essential for the next generation of Wear OS, while Motorola is using the platform to develop Project Maxwell, its AI-perceptive companion concept first teased at CES.
(Image credit: Wareable)
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“By integrating the new Snapdragon Wear Elite platform, the next-generation Galaxy Watch will be an even more holistic wellness companion. said InKang Song, Executive Vice President and Head of Technology Strategy Team, MX Business at Samsung Electronics.
“This marks an important step in our ongoing efforts to deliver more efficient and personalized experiences, right from your wrist.”
That confirms the chip will be used in the next generation of Samsung Galaxy Watch devices, with the Galaxy Watch 9 and Ultra 2 rumored to be landing as early as July. And given recent history—and the fact that Xiaomi’s just-announced Watch 5 runs on the older W5+ Gen 2 —it’s likely this will serve as the debut.
And even though we managed to get our hands on a nifty reference device (shown above) at Qualcomm’s stand at MWC—which even included a built-in camera—we’ll have to wait to see which features brands choose to have the next-gen chip power.
