Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Set To Revolutionize Mobile PC Market

Overnight at Computex 2017 Qualcomm announced that it has entered a new partnership with ASUS, Lenovo, and Hewlett-Packard to build a new range of mobile PCs powered by the Snapdragon 835 processor family. This is pretty big news for Qualcomm as it means their mobile SoCs (System on Chip) will soon be powering small fanless laptop PCs that are running Microsoft Windows 10 for ARM. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 is the successor to the Snapdragon 820 and has up to 27% more compute performance and an impressive 40% lower power consumption thanks to architecture changes and the move 10nm FinFET manufacturing process. Qualcomm also says this platform stacks up nicely against x86 competitors with up to 50% longer battery life and 4-5x longer standby battery life.

Qualcomm showed off the Snapdragon 835 Mobile PC Platform Prototype Circuit Board at Computex 2017 and it’s pretty tiny. With ASUS, Lenovo and HP signed up to develop the first OEM systems it will be really interesting to see what designs they come up with for this mobile PC platform. Qualcomm says this platform has the capability to deliver all-day battery life and beyond, so hopefully the OEM designs are able to deliver such a product.

The other really neat thing about this platform is that the Snapdragon 835 SoC comes with a high-performance X16 LTE modem integrated inside. This means you’ll no longer have to hunt down an open Wi-Fi connection to gain access to your e-mail and the web as you’ll always be connected with cellular towers. The new X16 LTE modem is also seriously fast with up to 10x the speed of the first generation or 4G LTE devices. The mobile platform also has a 2×2 802.11ac MU-MIMO Wi-Fi solution, so you still have the wireless connectivity of a laptop as well.

It appears that Qualcomm has come up with a mobile platform that is going to be light weight, silent thanks to the fanless SoC, always connected, and having all-day battery life. Everything sounds great and hopefully Windows 10 for ARM doesn’t flop. Microsoft has added x86 emulation to Windows 10 for ARM, so they might be able to pull it off!

You can find out more about the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 here.