The Always Connected Windows 10 PCs strike back! Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 is now officially a thing, with the company unveiling this new Mobile Compute Platform at Computex today.
Microsoft and Qualcomm have been at it together for a while now, bringing Windows 10 to ARM based devices. The two companies announced their plans in December 2016, promising emulation of x86 applications.
A year later, we got devices with the Snapdragon 835 chip, but these have not exactly been met with praise due to their performance issues.
This new iteration, however, amps things up in all the right areas — there’s an overall 30% boost in performance, a 20% boost in battery life, and a 20% increase in 4G LTE speeds.
In the words of Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and general manager, mobile business unit, Qualcomm Technologies:
“Building on the portfolio of Always On, Always Connected PCs established over the past year, we are thrilled to work with Samsung to help offer consumers true mobility combined with the productivity and entertainment features of Windows 10. To truly expand this category, our work with mobile leaders like Samsung is important to help us deliver the next generation of Always On, Always Connected PCs to consumers.”
Here’s a video showing it in action:
The Snapdragon 850 platform is largely based on the Snapdragon 845, which as you know is used in flagship Android phones. However, this new creation is exclusively for Windows 10 PCs.
It includes the same eight 10nm Kryo 385 cores, but here they are clocked at up to 2.96GHz, instead of the 2.8GHz on smartphones. Also included is the Adreno 630 GPU, which offers 4K UHD video playback, HEVC video encoding of 1080p video up to 120fps, along with improved gaming performance.
Overall, a very good package.
Qualcomm has said that devices with this new chipset will begin shipping this holiday season.
Let’s just hope they have a better fate than the first wave of Always Connected PCs.
