Lenovo’s first Windows 10 computer with an ARM-based processor could hit the streets any day now. First unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the Lenovo Miix 630 is a 12.3 inch tablet with a detachable keyboard that lets you use the computer in notebook or tablet modes.

It’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor and ships with Windows 10 S software, but you can switch to Windows 10 Pro free of charge within 180 days of activation.

Lenovo hasn’t announced the release date yet, but the tablet showed up at the FCC website this week, suggesting that the wait may almost be over.

The tablet is expected to feature 4GB of DDR4-1866 memory, 128GB of UFS 2.1 storage, a 1920 x 1280 pixel IPS, 400-nit display, and a Lenovo Digital Pen.

It has a USB Type-C port for charging and data, a microSD card reader, a headset jack, stereo speakers, a 13MP rear camera, a 5MP front camera and an infrared camera with Windows Hello facial recognition support.

The Lenovo Miix 630 also supports 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1, and 4G LTE Cat 11 wireless networks, and this an “always-connected” PC that’s able to stay online and receive updates and notifications wherever you are, even if the screen is turned off.

Lenovo says the tablet should get up to 21 hours of battery life although real-world run time will likely be shorter. And those are the two key selling points for Windows on ARM: long battery life and always-connected features.

Unfortunately early reviews of other Windows on ARM devices haven’t been all that positive. The Asus NovaGo and HP Envy x2 are said to be sluggish, particularly when running x86 apps that require emulation. They also don’t support 64-bit x86 apps, which means some software simply won’t run on Windows 10 on ARM at all.

It’s unlikely that Lenovo’s new 2-in-1 tablet will offer substantially better performance than those devices: it has the same processor and the same software, after all. And unless Lenovo has changed its strategy since January, the Miix 630 is also going to be one of the more expensive Windows on ARM devices: it’s expected to sell for about $800 when it goes on sale.

thanks Kevin!

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,547 other subscribers

5 replies on “Lenovo Miix 630 hits the FCC ahead of launch”

  1. Note that Microsoft recently released SDK for ARM64, thus now one should be able to recompile your application natively thus avoiding emulation.

    I hope machines with Snapdragon 845 shows up sooner.

    1. I am hoping to see some desktops/ mini desktops soon too.
      Hopefully, they’ll put two 845 together to increase power.

      1. There is no market for NUC-style mini PCs. The benefits here are very small motherboard design due to most of components integrated into SOC, power consumption (thus allows “always connected standby”) and a good battery life, no fans etc.

        There is no NUMA support for 845 for sure, thus you cannot have 2S (dual socket) system. Even their ARM64/AArch64 datacenter chip doesn’t do 2S if I recall correctly.

        1. Ty for the explanation, multiple arm chips see synchronized for laptop use would be something interesting to see in future.

          Or a combo AMD64 and ARM64 device, especially if AMD or Intel were to start making ARM chips.

          1. There are “combo” solutions for years. E.g. AMD APU at some point (don’t know about the current ones) used to incl. ARM Cortex-A5 as security co-processor. Apple MacBook with touchbar is also running their ARM chip which also handles security. It’s common to have extra some cores / additional processor for particular reasons. Those processors could be running different instruction set, different OS, have different security levels, etc.

            I doubt operating systems could handle cores with different ISAs.

Comments are closed.