Qualcomm’s Next-gen Always-on Mobile Platform Sports Snapdragon 850, Brings More Entertainment & AI

At Computex 2018, Qualcomm releases details about a platform it first talked about at great length at last year’s Computex: all-day notebooks. To date, three models featuring the Snapdragon 835 have hit the market, but traction has been a bit tepid, for a couple of reasons – OS updates have been needed to unlock the platform’s full efficiency (now taken care of), and mindsets about Arm platforms for Windows still need to be changed.

Following the simple release logic thus far, no one could blame you if you thought this year’s Computex featured notebooks with the Snapdragon 845 – the current flagship, featured in phones like the Samsung Galaxy S9, LG’s G7^THINQ, and the OnePlus 6. Nope; instead, we’re looking at the interestingly named Snapdragon 850.

Considering the fact that Qualcomm fully intends to deliver 5G-capable always-on notebooks by the end of the year (or early next), it seems likely that the launch of 850-equipped notebooks will happen much, much sooner. I am not entirely sure on the exact date for any new models, but as always, we’ll keep you apprised as soon as we learn more.

According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 850 will boost the performance by 30%, and both Gigabit LTE performance and battery-life by 20% – all great things for a platform that directly hinges on all of that. Versus the 845, the 850 shares the Adreno 630 graphics, X20 LTE modem, Hexagon 685 DSP, Spectra 280 ISP, and Kryo 385. So, it’s effectively an 845, which itself makes it a great upgrade over the 835 – it includes, at the very least, a 350MHz boost on the CPU clock speed. The LTE boost bounces from 1Gbps to 1.2Gbps (because 1Gbps is just so lackluster!)

During a press briefing, Qualcomm talked about its industry support, including an attractive deal from Sprint. Kicked-off on June 4, Sprint is offering free data to those who purchase an always-on PC, though it’s important to note that the deal is time-limited, so if you want in, you will want to act fast. EE and TIM also offer free data, while Chungwa Telecom, Deutsche Telecom, and Telefonica all offer bundled deals – buy an always-on PC from either, and get a special data plan.

With the 850, Qualcomm iterates to deliver even more entertainment, and definitely more artificial intelligence. On the entertainment side, the main improvement is with the capture – the move from 835 to 850 brings full-fledged 4K playback, but also capture (something I tested on the 845-powered OnePlus 6 at random points en route to Taipei).

Qualcomm also notes that the new Windows 10 April Update becomes a major upgrade for the platform, bringing in support for the 64-bit Edge browser, and if that made you say, “64-bit?” – yup. It also brings the 64-bit release of the Win32 SDK to enable that, which tackles one of the most common complaints with the 835-based platform. Further, merely updating to April Update boosts graphics performance about ~30% – something obviously special to the Arm platform (not desktop). At its press briefing, a Microsoft rep said that it has released its Arm SDK to developers, for those who would like to recompile their own apps natively for the platform, improving performance overall.

With the Snapdragon 850, Qualcomm is continuing to iterate on its 10nm product, which the company would like to remind you beats out both desktop CPUs and GPUs (12nm on CPU, 14nm on GPU). As mentioned before, we’re not entirely sure when the first 850-enabled notebooks will hit the market, but as soon as we learn more, we’ll make sure you know soon after.