ASUS, Lenovo & HP Adopt Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 Mobile PC Platform For Upcoming Windows 10 Devices

Earlier this year, Qualcomm announced that its top-end Snapdragon 835 processor would become an ingredient in forthcoming devices that aim to deliver (beyond) all-day battery-life, and a high-performance X16 LTE modem for super-fast data transmissions. At Computex 2017, we find out that ASUS, Lenovo, and HP have all committed to the platform.

Unfortunately, no images of the devices these vendors are working on have been released, but by this point in time, you can probably envision what an ultraportable notebook looks like. With a seriously low-power yet capable processor like the Snapdragon 835 under-the-hood, such devices could last all day, and remain connected the entire time.

That latter point is an important one. Notebooks are useful for their portability, but that usefulness will drop when en route from one place to the next, once a Wi-Fi hotspot becomes out-of-reach. With a constant LTE connection, devices based on Qualcomm’s platform would in effect become a notebook version of a smartphone, but there’s one big difference: this platform can support Windows 10. Not just one version, but all versions (Home, Enterprise, et cetera).

Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Mobile PC Platform Prototype Board

Windows on ARM-based platforms has a bit of a bad rap due to what was ultimately a poorly received version of Windows (RT, based on 8). So, what’s different now? Windows 10 is a much better fleshed-out OS for use on ARM, and the app store has been continually improved over the years, and beyond that, the performance of the Snapdragon 835 won’t make the device feel limited. You’ll be able to take full advantage of Microsoft Office, for example, without it feeling slower than the same apps on even high-end x86 devices.

Speaking of x86, that’s another major feature that sets this Windows on ARM platform apart. From the get-go (once devices are available), users will be able to emulate x86 32-bit applications, and while there is going to be some obvious performance overhead, it should technically only be noticed (if at all) on the first start of the application after each boot; the emulation code will then be cached so subsequent runs of said apps start even quicker.

To be clear, there are no real limitations to this emulation; there’d just be limitations to the platform (no, it’s not going to run Crysis because these devices are not going to be focused on gaming). If you want to download FileZilla to transfer files, Audacity to edit audio, or 7zip to extract files, installing them will feel no different from doing the same on a native x86 platform.

That right there is one of the most alluring aspects of this platform. With Windows RT, people were severely limited by what they could run, as many developers didn’t want to spend time porting their apps for unknown successes. Now, they don’t even have to think about it, and neither do the users. Qualcomm’s 835 mobile PC platform won’t “feel like” an ARM platform; it will be totally invisible to the user.

Competitor to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 Mobile PC Circuit Board

Ultimately, Windows 10 on ARM will deliver a familiar experience and will support a wide-range of applications. What users will gain on top of typical notebooks is all-day battery-life (quite literally, depending on the configuration and use case), seriously lightweight designs, and of course, Internet connections via Ethernet, Wi-Fi, as well as LTE. In a demo shown to us, a 2GB file copied in about 30 seconds over an LTE connection, which is the kind of performance Qualcomm expects to be average (it can be better or worse depending on environment factors.)

The biggest downside right now is that we must wait (hard, isn’t it?) to see the devices that ASUS, Lenovo, and HP have up their sleeves. It’s expected that the first devices will launch in a couple of months, hopefully well in advance of the new school season as these devices would perfectly complement student workloads just as well as business and personal.