Qualcomm Atheros WCN3660/WCN3680 mobile Wi-Fi
Integrated Wi-Fi (and Bluetooth/FM) companion chips that Qualcomm Atheros built into early-2010s Snapdragon-era smartphones and tablets, announced in 2011-2012 and shipped in devices like the 2013 Nexus 7. The driver also covers the closely related WCN3610 variant used in similar mobile platforms.
recommendation
Worth keeping but flagging as legacy mobile silicon, because the chips themselves haven't been designed into new products since around 2014 yet the driver is still actively maintained upstream — patches as recent as March 2026 add support for the related WCN3610 part. It also remains the only way to get Wi-Fi working on aftermarket Linux ports such as postmarketOS on the 2013 Nexus 7, so removing it would strand a real, if small, community of users.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
As of March 6, 2026, upstream still carries feature work for this driver family ('wifi: wcn36xx: Add support for WCN3610'), indicating active maintenance rather than removal.
- cateee.net
LKDDb identifies CONFIG_WCN36XX as support for Qualcomm Atheros WCN3660/3680 and shows the driver remains present through current kernel series.
- qualcomm.com
Qualcomm announced WCN3660 in May 2011 as a smartphone/tablet connectivity chip with commercial release scheduled for late 2011, establishing this as an early-2010s mobile part.
- qualcomm.com
Qualcomm described WCN3680 in February 2012 as a mobile companion chip for Snapdragon S4-era smartphones, tablets, and PCs, reinforcing that the family is from the early 2010s product cycle.
- wiki.postmarketos.org
A current postmarketOS device page for the 2013 Nexus 7 reports mainline support and working Wi-Fi, showing present-day hobbyist/aftermarket use of old devices that can still depend on this driver family.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Lore evidence came from `lore_file_timeline` on `drivers/net/wireless/ath/wcn36xx/main.c`; it showed recent 2025-2026 patch traffic and no removal signal, while a removal-oriented `lore_regex` timed out and a `lei` fallback was blocked by local socket permissions. Device identity was confirmed from local `Kconfig` via shell and corroborated with LKDDb from web search. Age/new-sales judgment is inferred from Qualcomm launch pages found by web search: WCN3660/WCN3680 were introduced in 2011-2012 mobile designs, so broad new-market availability likely ended around 2014 even though legacy devices remain in enthusiast use. Current deployments are best characterized as low: not zero because postmarketOS-era legacy devices still use it, but not a mainstream 2025 new-hardware target. No natural upstream replacement driver exists for the same onboard chipset, so removal is not justified; annotate as legacy/mobile-niche hardware but keep the driver.