Microsoft recently announced that it was working with Google to port Chromium to run natively on ARM64 architecture, which means that in addition to the Microsoft Edge web browser, we could see Google Chrome and other related browsers running on Windows 10 Chromebooks with Qualcomm Snapdragon processors.
But it looks like Mozilla got there first — the company has released a beta version of its Firefox web browser that runs natively Windows 10 on ARM.
It’s already possible to run Win32 versions of applications on Windows laptops and tablets with Qualcomm Snapdragon chips. But native ARM64 support means that Qualcomm-powered Windows devices like the Samsung Galaxy Book 2, Lenovo Yoga C630, and Huawei Matebook E 2019 won’t need to emulate x86 architecture in order to run Firefox… and that should lead to better performance and reduced resource consumption.
So on that front, it’s nice to see a growing number of Windows app developers add native ARM64 support.
What would be even nicer is if PC makers would either lower the prices of their Windows on ARM devices — right now they tend to sell for $600 and up, and while they offer long battery life and always-connected capabilities thanks to integrated 4G LTE modems, when it comes to performance they tend to lag behind their Intel and AMD-powered counterparts.