With the aim of hastening the development of IoT solutions, Qualcomm has today announced that it is adding support for Google’s Android Things OS to their Snapdragon 210 processor. This development comes post the chipmaker’s continued efforts to court a collaborative partnership with the platform. Support for the same is expected to debut on Snapdragon 210 later this year.
The highlight of this partnership is, however, the fact that the Snapdragon 210 system-on-chip (SoC) now comes packed with the company’s latest X5 LTE modems. Thus, the said processor will offer integrated 4G LTE support for IoT devices powered by Android Things. The chipmaker is presenting manufacturers and developers with an opportunity to harness the power of their robust new connectivity chip to build remote video monitoring, asset tracking machines and electronic signs.
This announcement comes on the heels of the upcoming Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona. And Qualcomm is now gearing up to display this integration that could become the primary basis for the development of IoT devices in the future. Talking about the same, Jeffery Torrance, VP of business development, Qualcomm Technologies Inc, says,
We are very pleased to add support for Android Things OS on Qualcomm Technologies’ Snapdragon 210 processor and bring these exciting new development options to our IoT customers.
Integrated 4G LTE, a first for Android Things, combined with our other wireless technologies, brings comprehensive connectivity and capabilities to the Google Cloud Platform.
Further, Qualcomm adds that Snapdragon 210 processors running Android Things have been optimized to deliver high-performance computing capabilities. It has been designed to support natural language processing, database queries, image and video analytics, and data processing tasks. Thus, it is urging developers to utilize the Google Cloud Platform and other services like Google Cast for Audio, Google Drive, and Firebase to build smart assistants and IoT devices.
Announced back in December, Android Things is a brand new platform launched by Google for developing applications and services for Internet of Things (IoT) devices using Android APIs. This is Google’s second attempt at building a cohesive IoT-focused developer platform. Previously, it has debuted Project Brillo, which failed to garner developer attention and eventually had to be revamped and launched in the form of a comprehensive, all-in-one platform.
