Qualcomm Shows Always On, Always Connected PC Experiences
The first Windows on Snapdragon devices have begun shipping to customers and Qualcomm feels that some people might be confused by what differentiates the Snapdragon Powered Always On, Always Connected PC from other solutions. Do you know the difference between an X86 platform versus the new a Qualcomm ARM platform in the Windows space? If you don’t we highly suggest reading a blog post by Miguel Nunes, Windows on Snapdragon lead at Qualcomm, as it has some good information on the platform and how they are trying to disrupt the PC space.
Mr Nunes explains in the post that Windows on Snapdragon devices have beyond all-day battery life – including up to 20+ hours of continuous video playback. Better yet, these always on, always connected PCs are said to have four to five times longer battery life in connected standby than competitors. Qualcomm ran a battery life stress test where they played a 1080p video for as long as possible with the PCs display set at 100nits. The device powered by Snapdragon played for more almost 22 hours. The competing x86 PC solution lasted a tad over 13 hours. The blog post goes on to say that for those not watching 20+ hours of videos a day can expect even longer battery life.
The video below shows how a Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered Mobile PC platforms turn on instantly, are always on, and are always connected to the Internet through a low-power mode called connected standby. This mode keeps you connected to the network to help ensure you receive notification and ensure all your data is synched. This is an area that Qualcomm does better than the competition as standby on a PC doesn’t compare since the internet connection is dropped.
Lastly, they hammer home the point that Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered Mobile PC platforms run cooler. This is because they were designed as low-power devices and therefore very little heat needs to be dissipated. In fact, the Windows on Snapdragon devices do not even need a fan to stay cool. Qualcomm has released a video showing you how cool their platform runs. The video shows that after just 15 minutes of multitasking (streaming video while playing a game) the Qualcommm Snapdragon-powered Mobile PC platform was running at 56 FPS while the x86 PC was running at 36 FPS. To be fair the x86 system had lower performance to start, but the heat from the system caused performance to quickly drop from where it started. Since Qualcomm’s solution doesn’t generate so much heat it can keep the clock speeds higher and offer better performance during use.