At the ongoing Computex 2017 event in Taipei, Qualcomm and Microsoft announced that three of the world’s leading PC brands – ASUS, HP and Lenovo will build upcoming Windows 10 PCs with Snapdragon 835 Mobile PC platform with the X16 LTE modem.
Found on high-end devices such as Samsung Galaxy S8, HTC U11, Xiaomi Mi 6, and Essential Phone, the Snapdragon 835 (10nm) platform is the most powerful mobile chip yet. With these upcoming Windows 10 PCs, Qualcomm will be bringing some of its smartphone expertise to the PC industry.
According to Qualcomm, these PCs (laptop, clamshells and 2-in-1s) will be ‘thin, light, fanless and are designed to deliver long lasting battery’. They will also support blazing fast Gigabit internet speeds (LTE connectivity) thanks to the Snapdragon X16 LTE modem on-board.
The prototype device demoed at the Computex was set up like a desktop PC but ran Qualcomm’s small development platform. A 46-inch monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse, familiar apps on Windows 10 and Gigabit LTE network, were all available to showcase Windows 10 powered by Snapdragon.
The always connected PC is coming. Learn what @ASUS, @HP, & @Lenovo have in the works: https://t.co/G0gvC1yG7B #Windows10 #Snapdragon pic.twitter.com/Df2ZOCam6I
— Qualcomm (@Qualcomm) May 31, 2017
Although there is no timeframe for the launch yet, this marks the first time Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip will power a real, full version of Windows OS, which have long been powered by either Intel or AMD processors. In the past, Microsoft failed at its efforts to use Qualcomm chips on lighter version of Windows such as ARM-based Windows RT, which didn’t support many Windows apps.
This time, Microsoft and Qualcomm seems to have gotten it right, as the latter claims these devices have up to 50% more battery life and about 5x longer standby times when compared to x86 devices.
Source: Qualcomm
