Slashdot Mirror
Qualcomm, Microsoft Announce Snapdragon 835 PCs With Gigabit LTE (arstechnica.com)
Microsoft and Qualcomm have announced that Windows 10 is coming to devices made by Asus, HP and Lenovo that will run on the Snapdragon 835 platform. "The Snapdragon 835 chip, incorporating Qualcomm's latest X16 LTE modem, forms the basis of the Snapdragon Mobile PC Platform," reports Ars Technica. "Qualcomm claims that using the Snapdragon platform will offer a combination of the PC form factor and breadth of software with features that are standard in smartphones: on-the-go connectivity, light weight, silent operation, long battery life, and no fan." From the report: Qualcomm says that PCs built using the new chips will offer up to 50 percent more battery life than x86 systems, with four- to five-times longer standby times. They'll take the Connected Standby capability already found in some Windows PCs -- this allows the system to do things like sync mail and receive notifications even when "sleeping" -- and make it better, thanks to their LTE connectivity. With a Snapdragon inside your PC, you'll no longer need Wi-Fi to fetch your latest e-mail and catch up on Twitter. Instead, you'll be able to get online wherever there's cellular connectivity. The X16 modem supports up to gigabit LTE connections, too. So as long as your network operator is cooperative and has embraced the cutting edge, this mobile connection will be fast, too. Asus, HP, and Lenovo are all planning to introduce Snapdragon Mobile PC systems at some unspecified time in the future, for some unspecified price. These machines will be laptop-style systems, just without the traditional x86 processor on the inside. Snapdragon 835 has a higher level of integration than Intel's mobile chips, enabling smaller motherboards. This in turn should tend to increase the space available for battery, or reduce the size and weight of machines, or perhaps even both.
a working product is still nearly zero. Too many teams have competing priorities plus our reviews compare us against competing teams so we try to drag everyone down to the same level. It sucks that after over twenty years at Microsoft, nothing I've ever worked on has ever made it into a customer's hands because of stupid infighting.
Other than asking if this hardware will run Linux (I know the basic answer is "yes", but I would like to see the network driver release plan for Linux) I have to wonder about Microsoft pushing a Snapdragon solution in terms of apps.
I would expect that Office 365 (and probably not basic Office) will run under the resulting version of Win 10 (S?) but what about 3rd party applications which includes games? I guess web apps that run decently on Edge will not be affected, but what about the rest of the Windows x86 (and 64bit) catalog?
Would Microsoft subsidize development houses to get their apps on this platform?
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Can it run linux or *bsd?
Because the odds of MS continuing to support this in the next cycle of management change are very low.
I'll bet they drop it just like an old version of "windows phone".
Of course, if you are only planning to use it for a maximum of a couple of years go ahead - the stuff that came with it will work and you probably won't miss the new stuff coming out that will not run on it so much.
For years I've been searching for a way to blow through my monthly 5GB data cap in under a minute and this can do it with 20 seconds to spare! Dreams do come true! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I have no interest in yet another device that requires an overpriced, locked-in, data plan from a US carrier that could learn better customer service from a fast food cashier. Unless these devices are paired with the fabled Microsoft data network and reasonably priced, they are a waste of the promise of the ARM/Qualcomm port of Windows to the chip. I want a great WiFi tablet based on this technology. All other parties need not call.
Every change is not progress, but there is no progress without change.
Is this including some kind of amd64 or x86 emulation? I can't imagine most Windows users will be too happy to find out they purchased a PC that's only capable of running software compiled for ARM! It would be a wonderful device to install Linux on, however, where we should have 100% compatibility. That is, of course, assuming we can reverse engineer Qualcomm's shitty proprietary drivers.
I'm posting this on my Thinkpad T420 with the 2520m Sandybridge i5 chip. A Snapdragon 835 benchmarks at almost exactly half the speed of this 6 year old laptop. So a chip that at best is half as fast as a low end device of more than half a decade old is now going to be loaded down even more doing "binary translation" of x86 calls into ARM. And I'm supposed to be excited?
FWIW, I dipped my toes into the Atom powered 2-in-1 market with the Acer 10 thing. It checks most of the boxes from this announcement regarding battery life, portability, etc. yet it collects dust. Why? Because it is slow. I don't care how pocketable a full Windows device is, if trying to do any real work on it is a frustrating experience of waiting that makes me want to chunk it out the nearest window, I think I'll pass.
Based on the fact that Intel couldn't even be bothered to stay in the market for this stuff leads me to believe that most other consumers agree with me.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Also this announcement gives Qualcomm's new processor a ton of free press. Even if Microsoft scraps this project they'll certainly find new buyers for them based on this press release alone.
There are a lot of people that use laptops for extremely low powered shit. They literally do nothing but surf the web, send e-mails (often also from a browser), consume media (again from a browser), and maybe write a document or spreadsheet (yet again, maybe in a browser). You can get away with a pretty low spec system for that and still have an ok experience. So maybe they find this worth it in trade for a longer battery life. Remember the reason we get long batteries these days is not because they've increased in storage a ton, but because we do better with low power states.
Remember that the low end keeps getting better, whereas the target they are trying to reach largely stays the same. The needs for office productivity work haven't really grown in a long time, but computer power has. That makes it an easier target to reach. We even saw this with desktops: Around the Core 2 days desktops stopped sucking. What I mean is that back in the day, even when you got a brand new computer it still sucked. The fastest 486 out there was still slow as dogshit for normal work. Booting up an OS with GUI took minutes, printing out a document took 100% of the computer's power. So every upgrade was noticeable better but regular work. However around about the Core 2 that stopped being true. They were "fast enough". Newer ones were faster and that was nice, but not so much that you'd notice or care a ton.
Plus don't underestimate the worship of the Cult of Thin(tm) these days. This should be very low power compared to a normal laptop, and thus something they can potentially slim down to stupid proportions. That alone is a selling point to some people.
Not saying I'll buy one, but I understand my standards for computers are much higher than many people's.