yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Moto 360] jaykresge:
I just wanted to clarify, as this is incorrect. The TI OMAP used in the Galaxy Nexus combined a dual-core Cortex A9 CPU @ 1.2ghz with a PowerVR SGX540 GPU @ 384mhz. By comparison, the TI OMAP used in the Moto 360 uses a single-core Cortex A8 CPU and a PowerVR SGX 530 GPU. The clock rates are undisclosed in this form factor, but the typical ranges were 600mhz - 1.2ghz for the CPU and 100mhz - 200mhz on the GPU. This chipset is nowhere near the Galaxy Nexus, nor does it need to be.

That said, a direct comparison to the Snapadragon 400 SOC is warranted. In terms of Android Wear, the Snapdragon 400 uses a single-core Cortex A7 with an Adreno 305 GPU.

CPU: (assuming both run at the same clock rate)

The Cortex A8 offers slightly better overall performance than the A7, with much better integer performance and much worse floating point performance. Overall performance for Android Wear should be identical, but the A8 uses considerably more power. However, even if the A8's power draw was double the A7's, it wouldn't cut the watch's battery life in half. There are numerous components that draw battery, and the CPU is a relatively small percentage of it. In all likelihood, going with the A7 would have netted a marginal gain in battery life but at a higher $$$ cost for Motorola.

GPU:

The PowerVR SGX 530 @ 200mhz delivers up to 14 million triangles per second. The Adreno 305 @ 450mhz, by comparison, delivers up to 80 million. In terms of peak fill rate, the SGX 530 delivers up to 200 megapixels/sec and the same for megatexels (single texturing unit). By comparison, the Adreno 305 delivers up to 800 megapizels/megatexels/sec (also single texturing unit). At peak performance, the Adreno 305 is 4-6 times more powerful than the SGX 530, while consuming less power. It also supports OpenGL ES 3.0, compared to just 2.0 on the PowerVR. This is the big issue here for future compatibility, as the performance numbers shouldn't be an issue on what is effectively a terminal-based platform running at 320x290 resolution (44.5 megapixels required to run two layers at 32-bit color at 60 frames per second, and we're not gaming).

Conclusion:

The Snapdragon 400 SOC offers better overall performance at a lower power consumption than the TI OMAP 3-series used in the Moto 360. My only guess as to why it was used was because Moto had excess stock available from their unsold products and found this cheaper than a write-off. Only time will tell if it has a meaningful impact on the Moto 360 versus the competition.
[Moto 360] vansmack:
First, thanks for the thorough explanation. I truly appreciated it.

The only thing I have a different take on is why they used the TI-OMAP 3. I don't think it was excess stock as much as their engineers and developers were very familiar with it. They've already built and Android watch with it (the MOTOACTV) and know it's capabilities in and out. That's why I bought the watch after just a slight hesitation because of the chipset - Moto engineers and devs know what they're doing with this chip, and I think it shows.
[Moto 360] knoxploration:
Because I am still hoping to find some way to improve it. It took weeks to get this thing, they sent me the wrong color and wouldn't even consider replacing it with the right one within a couple of hours of receipt (they wanted me to send it back, wait 3 weeks for a refund, then reorder myself and go to the back of the queue), so I can already see a warranty claim will involve weeks of me being without the watch. If there is any way to avoid that, I want to.
[Moto 360] raduque:
In my mind, the SoC of as smartwatch is irrelevant. There is simply no reason for a high-end, hot, power hungry quadcore with a smokin' fast GPU and 4gb ram on my wrist.

It's a timepiece, a remote notification manager and music controls. Anything else is too much, and I don't want it. I don't need hugely animated watch faces, I don't want apps, and I damn sure don't want to play games.

I'm fine with the SoC in the Moto360, I bought it because it's the best looking smartwatch out now, period, and IMO the G Watch R isn't going to change that (It looks like a $20 Wal-Mart sport watch)
[Moto 360] chrisnewton:
I totally agree with that, totally.. My only concern is if the watch gets out dated to quickly because of the processor. I don't want to play games on it either but what if say when android wear version 3 comes out the processor is incapable of running it.
[Moto 360] raduque:
If Google is smart, they will not turn smartwatches into "wrist phones" and start demanding of them phone-level performance from the hardware. Hopefully, the manufacturers will limit what Google throws in the software by limiting the watch hardware and using low power, low performance SoCs.

Honestly, though, we're still in the "early adopter" phase of this tech. I paid $240 for my 360. If it lasts me to half-way through the second gen, I'll be happy.
[Moto 360] chrisnewton:
You make good sense.. Makes a change to have a proper adult discussion about it
[Moto 360] kevinlevrone:
This remind me of the "640KB is enough for everyone" quote of Bill Gates :)

---------- Post added at 04:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:10 PM ----------

If Google is smart, they realize that as the hardware advances, your watch may very well be your communication device in the near to medium future. In fact, the current smartwatch approach to be a smartphone's companion is only dictated by the hardware state today and it is not a true goal. Nobody really needs a smartphone remote control, everybody needs a single tiny computer that does as much as possible. Coupled with a tiny in-ear device like the new Moto Hint, there is no reason why the watch couldn't totally replace a phone or anything that doesn't need a big screen, given sufficient hardware which will inevitably come in the following years.
[Moto 360] raduque:
You can let it remind you of whatever you want it to. This is simply my opinion. I don't need or want a phone on my wrist, and I will be highly disappointed if Google takes the Android Wear platform that way, and I will probably drop smart watches entirely and go back to wearing a plain old indeglo Timex.

---------- Post added at 11:56 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:20 AM ----------

All I can say is that if this comes to pass (and it possibly will), I hope they will still have traditional phones with large screens (as my eyes get older, I need a bigger screen to see better) and companion watches. Or, as I said in my last post, I will switch back to a "dumbwatch" and a normal phone... if possible.
[Moto 360] knoxploration:
There are a lot of people here fixated on the performance who have absolutely no idea what the real advantages of a modern soc are for a device like this. Battery life with a modern soc would be significantly better; performance has little to do with it.
[Moto 360] ThePublisher:
Battery performance would be better with a newer chip, but supposedly also the watch would have to be larger. I have zero performance complaints about this TI chip in the 360. Works fine without a hitch as the phone does most of the processing anyway for Google Now. If you think its slow, its probably your bluetooth connection with your phone.

If your concern is battery life, turn off the constant use of the heart rate monitor that comes in every ~5 minutes to check your pulse. You can do this with build.prop edits now and I would expect we'll see some custom firmware with that built in coming at some point in the (hopefully) near future.
[Moto 360] TabGuy:
There must be a batch of bad watches. I'm a moderate user with Facer watch faces. With Ambient mode off I get about 3% per hour drain. With Ambient mode on it goes to 4 1/4% per hour. For those that are getting 7-8% per hour on the base phone I'd say you have one from the bad batch.
[Moto 360] jaykresge:
Not likely. Both SOCs are layered behind the 512MB (4gb) RAM chips in their respective watches (Moto 360, LG G Watch, and Samsung Gear Live). In all three cases, the RAM chips are the same size. I've only seen the RAM removed on the Moto 360 teardown, so I don't know if the Snapdragon SOC is larger or smaller, but since they're hidden behind the same sized object, it looks like this is a push.

Now, if there's another reason you feel that the Snapdragon would make the watch larger, please divulge that. I'm sincerely interested.
[Moto 360] mackster248:
Here's my take on people that are worried about the 360's SoC;

First off, on my mobile device I demand no lag and absolute smoothness as much as possible, so I understand why anyone would want the best that's out there. I'm on my phone quite often whether it's for communicating with friends or as a media device (videos, games, etc). So my phone HAS to be the top of the line, etc.

Now as for my watch.... Why would I need the best SoC? The watch is simply an extension of your phone. If you're spending more than 10-15 seconds at any time on a watch, then I believe you're doing it wrong. You use the watch to check some notifications, simple gander at the weather or anything else similar or maybe ask a simple question via Google Now. I just need a competent SoC to do those things. Will it be a little choppy here and there? Probably, but why does that matter? It's not like you're gonna sit there and use it for a long period of time like your phone.

If a person is really going to sit there fiddling with their watch and getting pissed because it's lagging on an app, then you're just going to look funny when you could have just popped out your device and enjoy that app on a big ass screen and good processor.
[Moto 360] knoxploration:
Yet another person who can't read the thread and doesn't understand the implications of process size on battery life.
[Moto 360] chrisnewton:
Mate I really think you need to send your watch back. Your obviously not happy with it and probably never will be.
[Moto 360] knoxploration:
Even if my watch is somehow magically different from the rest, it doesn't change the fact that Motorola made a bad decision. There isn't a person here who wouldn't have paid the slight extra required for a newer soc in exchange for significantly better battery life, which is what they would have gotten.
[Moto 360] chrisnewton:
Agreed, but your missing my point.. Your not happy with the watch are you?
[Moto 360] gammite:
using the watch in a regular fashion my battery life was amazing after the update. i am hoping for more improvements with the upcoming updates to android wear.

on a 13 hour road trip the other day streaming music and radio the majority of the time i was surprised to get a low battery notification at about 12 hours into the trip. i didn't realize how much the remote control on the watch took out of the battery. on future long trips like that i will mute the watch or change the brightness to level one instead of auto.

i still find it amazing that the watch lasted 12 hours before i got the notification.
[Moto 360] jaykresge:
I agree wholeheartedly with you that the issue isn't performance (performance between the too should be close enough that it won't matter on this device), but rather, battery life. However, I had to set aside my love of specs and just ask myself - "Does it do what I want it to do?" After the recent update that improved battery life, it met my requirements. I worked a 10 hour shift yesterday. When I left work, 11 hours after I took my watch off the charger, it was at 78%. It exceeds my needs right now.

I do question "WHY" Motorola chose this SOC. I don't think there's any positive to it aside from cost savings. Those who say "But Motorola knows the SOC better and get get better performance out of it" don't understand a couple of things;

- the architecture is the same (much like Intel's various x86 CPUs, these are different types of ARMv7 CPUS), so performance gains from SOC-specific optimization would be negligible at best,

- the OS is handled by Google, not Motorola, so device-specific optimizations in the OS are limited, regardless, and,

- the only way an application would really get a huge benefit on one SOC over another was if "coded to the metal," so to speak, which Android's Java-like implementations don't do.

So what it boils down it is that both the TI OMAP and the Snapdragon offer more than adequate performance for this form factor, the Snapdragon offers better power efficiency, while the OMAP was likely available to Motorola at a much better cost while offering "adequate" battery life. As I've said before, if the Snapdragon consumed half the battery as the OMAP in similar situations, that wouldn't double the watch's battery life. There are numerous components taking power from the battery, and as is typical, the display is the biggest culprit. If the SOC accounts for 10% of the battery consumption, cutting that consumption would extend the Moto 360's overall battery life by roughly 5%. If the SOC were to account for 30% of the watch's overall battery consumption, cutting that by half would extend the watch's battery life by roughly 15%. Those are likely the more extreme examples, but all of those numbers are speculative.
[Moto 360] chrisnewton:
Ok have to ask.. What does soc stand for?
[Moto 360] knoxploration:
I really have to wonder how people are getting these battery life figures, other than not using their watches. I've got 80% battery life right now, and my watch has been off the charger for 2.5 hours. I have basically not used it at all, it has just been on my wrist. I have no apps installed (not even Motorola's Connect app). The watch was last completely reset three days ago, has all defaults except Ambient mode is enabled (but others are reporting far lower power consumption than I get *with* ambient mode), and has not had any apps installed since it was last reset.

It's like there's two completely different types of watches out there: usable ones, and almost unusable trash like I got.

system-on-chip: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_on_a_chip
[Moto 360] ThePublisher:
I don't remember where, but in one of these 360 threads someone with more knowledge than I said the quad-core Snap was larger than this single core TI and could have played into Moto's decision to use it. That and the obvious cost savings....
[Moto 360] jaykresge:
Knox gave you a Wikipedia link, but I'll post some basic info here.

Most people confuse things like "Snapdragon" or "Exynos" as CPUs. They're SOCs (system on a chip). The SOC contains many subcomponents, such as a CPU, GPU, and other important pieces. Some examples of common SOCs and their CPU/GPU sub-components:

TI OMAP 3 Series - Cortex A8 and PowerVR SGX530

Snapdragon 200 - Cortex A5/A7 (depending on series) and Adreno 203/302

Snapdragon 400 - Cortex A7 and Adreno 305

Snapdragon 600 - Krait 300 and Adreno 320

Snapdragon 800 - Krait 400 and Adreno 330

Exynos (current generation) - quad-core Cortex A15 + quad-core Cortex A7 in octo-core configuration with ARM MAli T6xx GPUs

No two people have the exact same usage profile. And no two days are different. On the day that I specified, I wasn't very active, checking the watch once every 15-30 minutes (so at least 2x per hour), and not many notifications. I did use it for quite a bit of music control, however. Today, though, I was off from work. I did a lot of driving and walking. I took it off the charger around 7AM, and here 12 hours later, it's at 52%, which I find acceptable.

I may make a separate post about battery care and usage.

Even if it's larger, both chips are layered beneath similar-sized RAM chips. Their size has zero impact on which was used. In fact, the opposite may be true. The Snapdragon SOCs are famous for having everything but the kitchen sink integrated. The Snapdragon 400 SOC used in the Gear Live and G Watch have Bluetooth 4.0 LE integrated. The OMAP in the 360? Separate chip. In fact, the Moto 360 has a lot of separate chips pulling functions that are handled by the Snapdragon 400 in the other watches. Here's something to illustrate my point:

Moto 360 Guts:

See the large chip that says 2SB28/D9QRM? That's the RAM chip. The TI Omap is underneath that (and much smaller than that chip). The chip just above it highlighted in green is the chip that handles Bluetooth.

Now, let's take a look at the layout on the G Watch:

The big chip in red is the RAM chip, same size as the one in the Moto 360 (different brand). Once again, the SOC (in this case, Snapdragon 400) is much smaller and layered behind it. Not quite as busy looking, is it? (keep in mind that one of the chips on the 360 is used for wireless charging, something the G Watch does not have).

The selection of the OMAP has no performance benefits, is a detriment to battery life (though likely not as much as guessed by some), but likely costs Motorola quite a bit less. For me, it suits my needs, but I do understand the frustration of some over its inclusion.
[Moto 360] knoxploration:
And no single day have I even managed power consumption as low as twice what you say you're getting, even when the watch is completely unused. If ambient is on, my power consumption is often close to four times that which you mentioned when the watch is used only minimally and not a single app is installed.

The amount that it saves Motorola on its BOM cost is likely greatly overestimated, too. I'd be amazed if it's saving them more than $10 per watch, *tops*, and quite likely a fair bit less. Even a top of the line mobile processor is pretty inexpensive, wholesale in large quantities like those Motorola will be buying. (Average unit cost for an ARM processor is around US$20. A Snapdragon 400 is believed to cost around US$10-15, and even a Snapdragon 800 is believed to cost in the high $30s or low $40s.)

Most likely, we're talking a savings of US$4-6 per watch here, or around 2% of the retail cost of the watch.
[Moto 360] Shadowguy:
I easily get 12 hours of use on my watch and receive notifications quite frequently.

Did you ever deep cycle your battery?

I can take mine off of charger at 10 am go to work with is a physical job with watch screen coming on all day every 1-8 minutes and still leave work 9 hours later at about 40%
[Moto 360] knoxploration:
Yes, the battery has been discharged completely multiple times (although that's not really something that needs to be done with LiPo anyway.) It has already completely run out of charge from fully charged, while I was wearing it and before I finished my day, twice.
[Moto 360] jaykresge:
Then there may be something wrong with your watch. For the record, I have ambient screen off, but brightness set to auto. I have no apps installed other than what it came with (tried One Note, went back to Keep). I have the step counter and associated card turned off.

I think this is a good post, and I wanted to expand on it.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/04/23/how-much-does-qualcomm-charge-for-a-snapdragon.aspx

Some estimates state that Qualcomm gets roughly $24 per SOC sold. Now, that could be $36 for a Snapdragon 800 and $12 for a Snapdragon 400, assuming a 1:1 sell ratio (extreme examples). But most of Qualcomm's business is from the low powered SOCs. I'd guess that your $10-$15 estimate is a little on the low end and it might be more in line with $17-$18, possibly a tad higher. But for this example, let's go with $15, which is the higher end of your estimate.

As for Motorola, I suspect that they had excess inventory of the OMAP3 from their failed MotoActv and other projects. So, why write them off as a loss when you can recycle them in a new first generation product? If this is the case, the cost of the SOC essentially became free (yea, they paid for it, but since it was already on hand, it saved the full cost of the Snapdragon SOC).

So, if they saved $15/device due to this one component, that means that for every 100k 360s built, Motorola saves $1.5M. That may not seem like a lot, but when you're losing money every quarter, you try to make up ground where you can. Qualcomm has also been known to play favorites with OEMs when it comes to supplying SOCs, so if Motorola had easy access to a bunch of OMAPs, that may have helped reduce their strain in one part of the supply chain.
[Moto 360] knoxploration:
The major flaw with that idea is that it assumes Motorola had an unused inventory of hundreds of thousands of these processors lying around, which is almost certainly not the case. No competent manufacturer is going to sign a deal for hundreds of thousands of processors that they don't 100% know they can sell without a clause letting them get out of the deal if need be.

And they're not going to base a new product design around an outdated processor solely to move a smaller amount of inventory because once they run that inventory out they either have to source more and pay over the odds, or they have to work to fit a new processor into the design and manage two completely different products under the same name (and customers will do their best to avoid the old inventory as soon as they find out about it, leaving them with a sudden ramp of returns and unsold inventory that have to be firesold) or they have to cancel the product altogether when they could have sold far more. It's just shortsighted.
[Moto 360] Steve-x:
If they did happen to be old stock(doubtful) the ifixit tear down pictures should display the date code of the processor.
[Moto 360] mackster248:
Mine lasts more than a day. Why would I need any more? A smartwatch is a luxury, not a necessity. I'm sure you can find a way to charge it overnight.
[Moto 360] gammite:
knox, what would be acceptable battery life for you?
[Moto 360] knoxploration:
The ability to routinely get through a single day without the need to charge part way, if ambient mode is enabled and everything else is at defaults.
[Moto 360] ThePublisher:
It looks like you are right, and what I read before wasn't about the chip size being a factor. I'm fine with the TI that's in there, but I would have gladly paid another $50 for this watch with a snap 400 and an OLED screen. But I guess that lets them bring out a MOTO 362 in less than a year and out-date our watches.
[Moto 360] kevinlevrone:
I never get less than 12 hours of battery life with Ambient Mode ON. 15 hours most of the time. With Ambient OFF I can get 22-24 hours. I have the brightness set to Auto.

---------- Post added at 10:22 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:16 AM ----------

I'm sorry but I think don't know what you are talking about. The graphics in the Snapdragon 400 is heavilty downclocked for smartwatch usage. It's probably faster, but more like 50% faster. And you are talking about OpenGL 3.0 vs 2.0 on a smartwatch ? I think there are smarter ways to prove your points :)
[Moto 360] knoxploration:
Most people sleep eight hours a night, so a day is 16 hours. By your own numbers, this watch isn't capable of getting through the day with ambient mode on.
[Moto 360] kevinlevrone:
Well...it is what it is. I never ran out of battery until now, so it does the job for me. Of course, you may as well wait for another iteration or choose another model, but for me it's not an option, I have to have the technology now but especially this great design. I can't wait to get old in order to own a nice smartwatch, and the technical details are just details, the Moto 360 does its job with no problems, I can afford to pay $250 until the next iteration.
[Moto 360] mcss86:
I am getting a full day awake 18 hours or so, but just barely. If the battery degrades this will be an issue.