The Topjoy Falcon mini laptop that I previewed last year is just starting to ship, but the folks at Notebook Italia report that Topjoy is already preparing to launch a new model with upgraded specs.
The original Topjoy Falcon features an 8 inch, 1920 x 1200 pixel touchscreen display, pen support, a 360-degree hinge, an Intel Pentium Silver N5000 Gemini Lake processor, and 8GB of RAM.
But when Notebook Italia spoke with the folks at Topjoy at the recent Global Sources Electronics Fair, they learned that a new model with a more powerful Intel Amber Lake-Y processor is in the works.
The new model is also being designed by Weibu and there was signage referring to it as a “Pocket Notebook,” so it’s not clear if the new model will be called the Falcon 2 or something else.
But it looks like the new model will feature an Intel Core m3-8100Y processor and a fingerprint sensor built into the computer’s power button.
For now it seems like the rest of the features will remain unchanged, so we can still expect an 8 inch display, 8GB of RAM, and up to 256GB of storage. The computer seems to have the same keyboard layout as the first-gen Falcon, which is to say it’s a little roomier than the keyboards on the GPD Pocket 2 or One Netbook One Mix 2S Yoga, but it’s still a bit cramped for comfortable touch typing, and since there’s no room for a normal touchpad, there’s an optical touch sensor in the middle of the space bar instead.
That said, with rivals GPD and One Netbook already offering models with Amber Lake processors, it’s nice to see Topjoy preparing a more powerful model — although I hope the company will continue to offer Gemini Lake versions as well, because it’d be good to continue to see a variety of price points in the newly competitive mini-laptop space.
Notebook Italia reports that Topjoy is also thinking about building a 7 inch model and/or a Windows on ARM model with a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and 4G LTE connectivity, but the company hasn’t committed to either of those designs yet.
You can find more pictures at Notebook Italia.
I wonder if it can be done with other non-main operating systems. I like to see one with ReactOS. I like to see one with ArcaOS.
Nice to see more OEMs going into the netbook space again. I’m personally hoping for more them to enter the even smaller device market: UMPCs/desktop handhelds. There’s only one that I know of in that space. I’d like see some more innovation in that space with more competitors.
7″ with ARM is pretty interesting, but SD 835 is inadequate for most people and I’m not sure if SD 845 or Kyrin 980 (if Huawei decides to sell SoCs) is going to be cheaper than 8100y.
It would be nice for battery life, but say bye-bye to Linux (well, technically not, but aarch64-laptops seem to be dead and a laptop without a touchpad, Wi-Fi and no CPU frequency control is not going to be much of use).
Bump from N5000 to 8100y is more of a sidegrade. They are roughly equal, one surpassing another in different tasks.
I don’t think we’ll see something more exciting in this space perf-wise until 2021, I believe all we’ll see will be experimenting with keyboards and form-factors.
JFYI, there is no SD 845 for Windows. It’s called 850. SD 835 has been abandoned now, so I doubt it will be used again. And there will be no 855 either. It will be called 8cx and will be even more powerful than 855 and on par with a i5U (still not clear if 7th gen dual core or 8th gen quad core, my guess is it will be in-between)
Are there benchmarks for the 8cx or at least information that shows it’d be on par with an i5U? I’m really interested in pocketable PCs with always on connectivity but the initial WoA devices are both big and slow.
Thanks.
There’s practically no 850 devices on the market, only a variant of Galaxy Book 2 which, judging by reviews, lacked performance and battery life (and is unavailable as far as I could look) and upcoming Hololens 2.
As 850 perf-wise is a very slightly overclocked on primary cores 845, widely available 845 serves as a better reference point.
8cx is looking awesome, especially in manufacturer-provided benchmarks, and considering Intel’s timeline for 19-20 and lack of sub-12W offers by AMD.
However, 850 was ‘released’ last summer and we don’t have any devices on the market. Even if 8cx indeed launches this year, I can’t expect devices on it until early 2020.
Also, 8cx is supposed to be a tier higher price-wise than 850 and seeing consistently high prices on WoA laptops (NovaGo at 630, Galaxy Book 2 at 1000), I kinda expect 1400-1500 price tag on 8cx, well above hexacores even now.
I dunno. I don’t think it’ll result in anything more than another set of low-availability overpriced toys (and I’m typing this from a Mix 2).
About 835 being over — as if. Quest seems to be selling quite well, so some of us will be stuck with 835 for two years at least. But it’s tangential.
I’m up for OEMs trying to innovate on form factors. Performance-wise, I’m okay with current set of low power Intel SoCs (ARM performance still has a ways to go though), SSDs and memory.
Maybe the slowing of smartphone sales will result in more companies experimenting a little more again the in PC space.
Are there other companies at least rumored to be looking into Windows on ARM UPMCs? It’d be great to have LTE support by default.
“…and/or a Windows on ARM model with a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and 4G LTE connectivity…”
I wonder how long that dream – or WoA in general – will last now that UWP apps are dead in the water.
https://www.techradar.com/news/could-the-death-of-uwp-apps-spell-the-end-for-the-microsoft-store
Does this prevent devs from compiling their applications to be native ARM binaries?
Yeah, UWP was more having an app adapt to phone and PC UIs and being compatible with both ARM and x86 was an obvious requirement.
I don’t see this preventing MS providing a flag to compile software for x86, ARM or both (similar to Apple’s universal binaries during the Power to x86 transition).
I’m still hoping that MS improves WoA. The death of UWP doesn’t necessarily mean the death of WoA as MS can implement a way for devs to compile various target binaries from the same code.
That’s one of the problems I had with the original Falcon fixed, but if they’re not going to add an SD card slot (micro or full, I don’t care which), then I’m still going to pass, personally. But this is still a nice spec bump and what it should have had from the start.
I’ve been hoping to get a Windows UMPC with long battery life and built-in LTE. I hope Windows on ARM is going to enable that. Too bad all the current devices are large (relatively) notebooks.
I want to see devices like this with Ryzen.
The Windows on ARM with LTE concept sounds interesting though.
A 7 inch Windows on Arm with LTE would interest me too. A modern day version of my beloved NEC MobilePro, but far more capable. Fingers crossed.
Always on and connected has always interested me. I hope Windows on ARM can improve to enable this. With the Intel Atom and Windows 10, MS had attempted this but it was pretty limited. Current devices like the Surface Go with a Core SoC will be in the Always Go/Connected Standby state but after4 hours, it’ll hibernate because battery drain is still not low enough.
I guess I’m more interested in the desktop/convergence experience as a whole. There’s been some work on the smartphone side but I feel it’s too mobile centric (needs a dock for desktop mode, candy bar form factor limits the ability to be in desktop mode while mobile, etc.). On the PC side, it’s been too desktop centric though (see above plus, aside from a few small companies, they’re too large).
Very good points. One thing though, I think I remember hearing that the latest Samsung phone (or phones) don’t require a dock anymore to go into Desktop mode.
GPD are planning just that with the GPD WIN Max
I know, I’m really excited for it.
I’d like to see a 4.5-5W TDP Ryzen first.
There’s no sense in 12W in 7″.