Snapdragon 835-powered PCs are finally a reality. At the opening day of Qualcomm's second annual Snapdragon summit, Microsoft's Terry Myerson has officially announced 'The Always Connected PC' powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 mobile platform. OEMs like HP, Asus and Lenovo have big plans for Snapdragon 835-based Windows 10 PCs. At the Snapdragon Summit, Asus CEO Jerry Shen showcased the first Asus PC running a octa-core Snapdragon 835 processor along with Windows 10 S operating system called the NovaGo.
The Asus NovaGO is also the world's first Gigabit LTE-laptop offering up to 1 Gbps speeds based on the Snapdragon X 16 LTE modem. The device will be available with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage for $599 while the 8GB RAM and 256 GB storage variant will cost $799. The Snapdragon 835- powered windows PC is smaller and faster and offers an incredible 30 days standby battery life. The device supports Windows Ink based stylus along with Cortana and Windows Hello.
HP has also announced a similar competitor in the form of HP Envy x2 which will be available in 2018. Qualcomm has confirmed that Lenovo will also showcase a similar Snapdragon 835-based Windows 10 PC later at CES 2018 on January 9.
We have been hearing about the idea of launching a mobile processor based Windows 10 PC for quite some time. With the 'Always Connected PC', Microsoft along with Qualcomm and its OEM partners are trying to bring the convenience of a Snapdragon SoC-based Android smartphone to a Windows 10 PC. This means Snapdragon 835-powered Windows 10 PCs will offer an 'always-on system' while delivering impressive battery life. You will not have to restart or hibernate the Windows 10 PC. You can simply use the power/wake button to start/idle your system when required like you do in smartphones. All Snapdragon PCs will offer better battery life when compared to the traditional ones and all devices will be 'always connected to the internet via a SIM card slot. In other words, the 'Always Connected PC' will work just life your smartphone.
OEMs also explained that by using Snapdragon 835, they were able to reduce the size and weight of the Windows 10 2-in-1s, thus making it more 'mobile'. Also, with the partnership with AMD, OEMs can now build Always Connected PC’s with AMD Ryzen mobile processors. As far as performance is concerned, the new Snapdragon 835 devices are at par with the Intel alternatives and Microsoft has announced an optimised Office 365 app. Other apps on the Windows Store are not optimised. Qualcomm says that these run as expects and users can also run .exe files.
(Disclaimer: The author is at the Snapdragon Summit in Maui, Hawaii on the invite of Qualcomm.)
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