Qualcomm announces new QCC5100 low-power Bluetooth SoC

More features and longer battery life for wireless earbuds

Qualcomm has announced its new QCC5100 Bluetooth SoC, which should provide both more processing power as well as lower power consumption for wireless headphones and “hearables”.

According to Qualcomm, the new Low Power Bluetooth SoC QCC5100 series SoCs will not only pack more power for smart features and sensor support but also improve power consumption by up to 65 percent for both voice calls and music streaming. The SoC supports low power performance, Bluetooth 5.0 dual-mode radio, and low power audio as well as Qualcomm’s ow features like the TrueWireless™ Stereo, aptX™ HD audio, Integrated Hybrid Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) and third-party voice assistant services.

The SoC itself packs a dual-core 32-bit processor and dual-core 120MHz-clocked Qualcomm Kalimba DSP audio subsystem and comes in two versions, QCC5120, which comes in a BGA124 package and the QCC5121, which uses smaller WLCSP81 package.

We are sure that plenty of manufacturers will jump to the chance to get their hands on this little SoC which should bring much better battery life compared to Apple’s AirPods, Bose SoundSport, Beats X, Sennheiser HD1 or Google Pixel Buds, which are also based on Qualcomm’s SoC.

According to Qualcomm, a couple of example designs will be available in the first half of this year so hopefully, some of the first devices should be coming by the end of this year.