New Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 chip is exclusively for Windows 10 devices

Qualcomm today is announcing the Snapdragon 850 Mobile Compute Platform skipping the electric current Snapdragon 845 built for smartphones. The new Snapdragon 850 brings a host of new features designed effectually the Windows 10 operating arrangement and made for smaller computing devices – and not but PCs.

While the Snapdragon 835 found currently in the HP Green-eyed x2, Lenovo Miix 630, and Asus NovaGo is seen as a outset effort at Windows 10 on ARM, the Snapdragon 850 is the offset chip built specifically for Windows 10 devices making it a significant advancement.

Snapdragon 850 – What'due south new

The Snapdragon 850 brings an advocacy over the current Snapdragon 835 smartphone processor with college clock speeds and more finely tuned cadre balancing for devices running Windows 10.

Compared to the current Snapdragon 835 in Always Connected PCs the new Snapdragon 850 brings:

30 percent increase in performance.
20 percent increase in battery life and efficiency.
twenty percent increment in Gigabit LTE speeds.

That heave in performance and longevity is due to the new Hexagon 685 digital point processor (DSP), Kyro 385 CPU, and new X20 LTE modem.

The refreshed X20 modem can deliver theoretical speeds of up to 1.2Gbps versus the X16 modem in the current Snapdragon 835'due south 1.0Gbps max.

While many of the components in the new Snapdragon 850 are found in the Snapdragon 845, the 850'southward tends to be clocked higher and tuned for Windows 10 due to better thermal space, larger batteries, dissimilar drivers, and unique hardware. As such, we volition never see a Snapdragon 850 in whatsoever smartphone.

For example, the Kyro 385 CPU is the same equally found in the current Snapdragon 845, just instead of a 2.8GHz clock speed, it now goes upward to two.95GHz (the Snapdragon 835 was fifty-fifty lower at two.6GHz).

Additionally, the Snapdragon 850 brings support for Microsoft'southward Machine Learning SDK and artificial intelligence (A.I.) initiatives. Every bit developers being to leverage A.I. in their apps, the Snapdragon will support them through direct hardware acceleration.

Snapdragon 850 - Audio and visual heave too

The new Snapdragon 850 chipset also leans more heavily on entertainment. The new chip has back up for the following advanced sound features with Qualcomm Aqstic and Qualcomm aptX audio, which features:

Virtual environs sound.
Up to native Directly Stream Digital (DSD) format.
High-dynamic-range and ultra-low Total Harmonic Distortion plus Dissonance (THD+N).
aptX Hd support.

Qualcomm'south Aqstic system works through a standard 3.5mm jack or more current USB Type-C ports.

Another shift is in media creation. The Snapdragon 835 supported 4K playback, just now the Snapdragon 850 also allows for 4K UHD video capture.

Finally, Qualcomm did ostend that the Snapdragon 850 will support secondary display output also, which opens the door for multi-monitor scenarios.

Welcome to the Mobile Compute Platform

Qualcomm is also making a subtle shift away from the previous 'Mobile PC Platform' with the Snapdragon 835 to the newer and more ambiguous 'Mobile Compute Platform' with the Snapdragon 850.

While Qualcomm did not announce on behalf of any of its partners' new hardware the reasoning for the name shift is due to hardware manufacturers moving across traditional laptops and 2-in-1s, which we take seen thus far.

Mobile Compute Platform is a flexible phrase that allows for more "innovative form factors" as Qualcomm calls it. While so far, we take seen 12-inch 2-in-1s there is no reason why Dell, HP, or Lenovo could not brand smaller viii-inch devices, pocket-sized devices with dual displays, or any other radical shift from what we know as a PC today.

Snapdragon 850 hardware specifications

In that location is a lot of nitty-gritty to the Snapdragon 850. Luckily, we accept all of those specificaitons here too.

Availability

Look for new devices running the Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 platform with Windows 10 in the second half of 2022.

Analysis - Why this is a large deal

Ever since Microsoft and Qualcomm announced Windows 10 on ARM back in late 2022 questions remained about how it would work, and long-term commitment.

Make no fault the Snapdragon 850 is a modified Snapdragon 845 – it uses many of the same hardware bits. Internally, we heard the 850 was referred to equally "Snapdragon 845s".

But this is the first ARM bit designed and tuned specially for running Windows 10, versus beingness shoehorned in like the Snapdragon 835. The CPU is clocked college, the cores are optimized for Windows 10'south workload and OS construction, and the drivers at present support all the features of the chipset (and vice versa).

One example is hardware-accelerated A.I. support, which makes Microsoft's Machine Learning SDK much more interesting for developers. Avant-garde A.I.-assisted photo-editing, grammer checking, and smart administration will be able to leverage this chipset directly opening many more opportunities.

Whereas Qualcomm was touting "beyond all-day battery life," which proved very accurate in my HP Envy x2 review, the Snapdragon 850 at present boasts "multi-day battery life."

That new X20 modem not just increases theoretical LTE speeds to 1.2Gbps but it too extends its achieve more markets due to lower Licensed-Assisted Access (LAA) requirements with xc percent of operators supporting the 10MHz range.

We should also brainstorm to encounter some existent hardware innovation also. While Surface-clones are fun we should begin to meet new form factors and experimental designs from manufacturers starting this year with the Snapdragon 850.

While there was no announcement effectually Microsoft's rumored "Andromeda" dual-screened tablet that PC being powered by the Snapdragon 850 seems very probable. Andromeda is not expected to exist appear until the autumn, which lines up nicely with the expected availability of the Snapdragon 850.

Finally, equally Qualcomm remarks themselves, this is only the beginning of a "multi-year try." Rumors of a "Snapdragon yard" powered by the new Cortex-A76 processor in 2022 promises performance rivaling an Intel Core i5 CPU. That paves the path for "real" PC laptops with the expected operation of Intel, merely all the benefits of ARM.

Even Dell is rumored to have a dual-screen mobile device.

Buckle upwardly. The rest of 2022 and 2022 is going to go even more than heady for "compute devices" with Windows x. Information technology'southward no longer merely virtually traditional PCs.

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