Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon 850 processor in June, promising it would offer up to a 30 percent performance improvement for Windows-on-ARM laptops and tablets when compared with the Snapdragon 835 chip.

Based on my experience with the Asus NovaGo and its Snapdragon 835 processor, Windows on ARM needs all the performance boosting it can get. So I’m looking forward to finding out whether Qualcomm’s chip lives up to its promise.

We might not have too long to wait to find out. Last week Lenovo introduced the first computer expected to ship with the new processor. And today the Lenovo Yoga C630 WOS showed up at the FCC website, suggesting that it could be ready to hit the streets soon.

Lenovo says the computer has a 13.3 inch full HD touchscreen display, pen support, a 360-degree hinge that lets you use the system in laptop or tablet modes, up to 8GB of RAM and up to 256GB of UFS 2.1 storage.

It measures half an inches thick, weighs about 2.6 pounds, features always-connected capabilities thanks to an integrated cellular modem and smartphone-like connected standby features. and the Lenovo Yoga C630 WOS should get long battery life thanks to its energy-efficient processor. It’s also a fanless computer that should operate silently.

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7 replies on “Lilbits 333: Windows on Snapdragon 850 is (almost) here”

  1. If the UFS storage is still eMMC, I am not that enthusiastic.

    These machines should come with proper NVMe SSDs for the high prices I have seen them advertised.

    @Brad: it would be nice to see them tested with Linux (if they are capable of running them at all). They are dead-slow Windows machines due to the Win32 emulation but they may be proper, fast Linux machines (only native code).

  2. Looks good as long as the budget model comes with at least 64gb of storage and costs under $500.

    1. I would be happy to see that too but I won’t hold my breath.

      It seems that the marketing thrust is the multi-day battery and premium build at very expensive prices for these Snapdragon machines.

      I hope that a powerful, open RK3399-successor appears in the near future and we see a lot of Chromebooks and boards built with it at affordable prices. In fact, I would be satisfied even with seeing some new, Linux-capable RK3399 machines with strong/active cooling and aggressive clocks on the SOC.

      1. Yeah, marketing departments and corporate boardrooms love to talk about the latest and greatest “Flagship” models with high hopes and and even higher price tags. Most consumers just want basic computing at a decent price. Also, I’m not likely to pay more than $500 for an underpowered ARM laptop running Windows RT 2.0 that lacks availability of mainstream apps. It will probably be obsolete in less than 5 years anyway.

  3. 30 percent increase is from slow to still slow. These Windows-on-ARM notebooks need to do something really well that no x86 notebooks can do after them to have a reason to exist: they need to get multiple-day battery life (x86 can already do 12+ hours), they need to be really fast on a native (ARM-codebase) browser (i7 level of browser speed on a i3 price machine?) or at the very least need to cut way bellow the x86 price range. Right now they are slow, not very well supported and expensive. Any entry level i3 notebook can run circles on them for cheaper and better software-compatibility (as long as they are shipped with an SSD, but in 2018 you are simply not allowed to buy a HDD-only notebook). They do have good battery life, but only as good as a high-end x86 ultrabook would get.

    1. Yep, a 30% increase will probably not be enough for a decent user experience. More like 100%, if the earlier reports are correct and the first gen are really dead-slow.

      I wish it was possible to put Linux on them to see what speed we would get with native 64bit ARM Linux binaries.

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