A new Qualcomm silicon platform aimed squarely at wearables arrived at the company’s Snapdragon Summit. Called Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2, it targets the category Qualcomm labels hearables, and the reference list of devices it can power leans heavily on eyewear.

The company says the platform doubles on-device AI performance over the Snapdragon S7 Gen 1 Sound Platform while cutting power use by up to 40 per cent. Wi-Fi 6E sits inside alongside aptX Lossless audio, XPAN wireless range extension and a fifth-generation active noise cancellation engine.

Qualcomm’s own examples of what the silicon can drive include earbuds, camera-equipped buds, open-ear hybrid designs, audio glasses and future multimodal wearables. It also points at Android XR devices, where Gemini is meant to run locally and read the world around the wearer.

Ziad Asghar, the company’s senior vice president and general manager for XR, Wearables and Personal AI, framed the shift as a move away from screens. “Those interactions won’t always happen through a screen,” he said. “They will happen through natural conversations.”

Speaking at the summit, Asghar also dismissed backlash against face-mounted cameras as a generational growing pain, comparing the anxiety to the cameras people already carry in phones. “Some of the concern honestly, in my opinion, is just because it’s a new form factor,” he said.

Source: Engadget, 9to5Google