Qualcomm Toq

The Toq (pronounced “talk”) is a smartwatch developed by Qualcomm released as a proof of concept to OEMs and was released in limited quantities in December 2013. The Toq was first unveiled at Qualcomm's annual Uplinq event on September 4, 2013 in San Diego. It syncs with Android 4.0+ smartphones, allowing users to scan through texts, emails, phone calls, and other notifications. It features a Mirasol display, which like E Ink e-reader screens, can be easily viewed in direct sunlight. Unlike most ereaders, it can display colors and can refresh fast enough for watching videos, it also includes speech recognition technology from Nuance to allow users dictate replies to text messages. The Toq has a backlight for when there is no outside light source.

Specifications

Reception

The Verge thinks that Mirasol display is great for a smartwatch, however feels that the Toq is not compelling. With Mirasol, the touch screen never turns off, so it draws effectively no power when it is not changing states and the screen refreshes instantaneously like LCD. The Toq is in full color, but the colors are muted.

Qualcomm

Qualcomm Inc. is an American global semiconductor company that designs and markets wireless telecommunications products and services. The company headquarters are located in San Diego, California, United States. The company has 224 worldwide locations. The parent company is Qualcomm Incorporated (Qualcomm), which includes the Qualcomm Technology Licensing Division (QTL). Qualcomm's wholly owned subsidiary, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. (QTI), operates substantially all of Qualcomm's R&D activities, as well as its product and services businesses, including its semiconductor business, Qualcomm CDMA Technologies. In November 2014, Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf announced at the company’s annual analyst day meeting held in New York City that the company is planning to target the data center market with new server chips based on the ARM architecture and plans to make them commercially available by the end of 2015.

Corporate history

Qualcomm was founded in 1985 by Cornell and MIT alumnus and UC San Diego professor Irwin M. Jacobs, USC, MIT alumnus Andrew Viterbi, Harvey White, Adelia Coffman, Andrew Cohen, Klein Gilhousen and Franklin Antonio. Jacobs and Viterbi had previously founded Linkabit. Qualcomm's first products and services included the OmniTRACS satellite locating and messaging service, used by long-haul trucking companies, developed from a product called Omninet owned by Parviz Nazarian and Neil Kadisha, and specialized integrated circuits for digital radio communications such as a Viterbi decoder and now it is one of the leading processor makers for smartphone companies.