Asus and HP are the first two companies to unveil upcoming Windows 10 computers powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processors. But we already know that Lenovo is working on its own Snapdragon-powered Windows PC. And now Fudzilla reports two more companies want in on that Windows-on-ARM action.

Samsung and Xiaomi are both said to be working on Windows devices that use Qualcomm’s flagship processor.

There aren’t a lot of details about what those Samsung or Xiaomi devices will look like. But it’s safe to assume they’ll be thin, light, and possibly fanless devices with long battery life, instant-on functionality, and 4G LTE support for always-connected capabilities, since those are the primary strengths of the Windows on Snapdragon platform.

In terms of raw horsepower, early benchmarks suggest Windows devices with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 processor tend to perform about as well as a machine with an Intel Apollo Lake low-power processor in terms of raw horsepower, while models with Qualcomm chips are expected to sell for higher prices than computers with their Intel counterparts. So the emphasis will be on the always-on, always-connected, ultraportable features.

The Asus NovaGo, for instances, is a 13.3 inch convertible laptop with up to 22 hours of battery life and a $599 starting price, while the HP Envy x2 is a 12.3 inch 2-in-1 tablet that weighs 1.5 pounds, measures 0.3 inches thick, and offers up to 20 hours of battery life (and pricing TBA).

Fudzilla speculates that Xiaomi, which has made a name for itself by selling low-cost, high-quality electronics will undercut some of its competitors on price. What remains to be seen is whether Xiaomi’s Windows on ARM devices will be sold in the US and Europe or if they’ll be confined to other markets where Xiaomi does business such as China and India.

 

 

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13 replies on “Reports: Samsung and Xiaomi to launch Windows 10 on Snapdragon devices”

  1. Think “Samsung Galaxy Tab S3” but with Windows. If they slot the fabled S Pen in the frame, and offer the full size pen and keyboard folio as accessories, they will have a killer note taking and even general use device.

    My doubts about Windows on Arm are based on that very same Tab S3 – NO Android tablet device has ever approached 20 hours battery life, even with an admittedly mobile operating system – why should we believe a system with the same brains and chops, running Windows, can double the Android performance?

  2. Those benchmarks are… not very encouraging. It’s looking like they will only offer Atom-level performance, and they want to charge a premium for the privilege?! I seriously doubt people will go for that.

    These devices will have to drop down considerably in price in order to survive. They might have a home as budget Windows devices, but that’s about it when you have benchmarks like this.

  3. Snapdragon 835 processor is much cheaper then intel chip, so it suppose to be much cheaper tablet 2 in1 or laptop

    1. Highend ARM chips are about $200 cheaper than mainstream Intel Core CPU’s. The manufactures using better battery life & always connected as the reason for similar prices between the devices wont work longterm. Plus, if they now decide to use smaller batteries then that would also save money. My guess is as soon as other manufactures get involved these devices will drop in price very quickly.

      1. That’s kind of my thinking as well. “Promising early benchmarks” aside, there’s plenty of precedent to indicate that these devices could be a big flop. In order to move units & keep interest in these devices, they will need to drop prices and use cost as a selling point sooner or later.

      2. You are all forgetting that SD 835 is a high end chip. Only found in $500+ phones and tablets. Donot expect cheap Windows devices based on this hardware, especially when you factor in extra cost of ram and storage that is needed to make a useful Windows laptop.

        1. It doesn’t matter if the 835 is only in $500+ phones, there are highend ARM chips in $100,000+ luxury cars as well, so what? ALL other specs being equal, an 835-based PC should be at a minimum $200 cheaper than it’s equivalent Core-based PC. The current manufactures are just trying to pad their margins on early adopters, which wont last when more manufactures enter the market later (unless they collude).

          Windows needing more RAM/storage to be useful is a completely different comparison between highend (8GB+/128GB+) & lowend (2-4GB/32-64GB) devices. Obviously the currently announced devices can never be as cheap as lowend Atom devices because of the large amounts of RAM/Storage. But they should slot somewhere between the lowend & highend pricing models thanks to the $200 CPU savings.

  4. Xiaomi laptops are nice looking, well built, and well priced. I can’t wait to see what’s in store.
    Hopefully, they’re late to the party because they’re going for the 845 instead of 835.
    If that’s the case I am in.

  5. I’d be mildly interested if they had an active stylus like the Surface tablets do. Microsoft made a misstep by not including that on the Surface RT tablets.

    1. Depends how high the QSD 835 is clocked, and how optimised the ARM cores are to the Windows 10S operating system/application build. And depends if that analysis is true.

      I feel like a Cherry Trail Intel Atom X7 (Z8750) is slightly faster than a Qualcomm 800 and slightly slower than a Qualcomm 820. Alternatives that spring to mind are QSD 427, QSD 805, QSD 650, QSD 652, QSD 653, QSD 636. I would say the QSD 805 is probably the most equal to it.

      Now, let’s look at Apollo Lake:
      https://ark.intel.com/products/codename/80644/Apollo-Lake

      Honestly, they all seem to offer less performance, at a higher power draw and that’s sad. The most competitive one looks like the Atom X5 (E3940). So these look more equal to the likes of the QSD 427.
      So if a QSD 835 is performing similar to a QSD 427… then the massive performance boost from the new QSD 845 is barely going to affect performance under Windows 10S. It will possibly be as equal to a QSD 450 on this scalable chart.

      However, I think the rumours are false.
      I believe the QSD 835 chips run much less optimised on Windows 10S than they do on Android, but not THAT much. Possibly comparing the QSD 835 running clocked down to around 2GHz. This means a QSD 835 Windows 10S device might perform around equal to QSD 660 Android one. But when it needs to do software x86 emulation, it will probably begin a pub crawl to much below Apollo-Lake levels.

      Remember Intel’s 14nm++ wafers slightly inferior to Samsung’s 10nm wafers, and this affects efficiency.

    2. Overall Intel’s Pentium N4200 will still be faster (with usual Windows software). There will be some performance loss for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 when running (bloatware) Windows 10 Pro or using Win32 emulation. Notice the part “In addition, Qualcomm runs the Snapdragon 835 with 2.6 GHz instead of 2.45 GHz standard clock speed in the NovaGo. This results in an advantage of about 5% in comparison to the standard chip”. This compensates for performance loss but contributes to slightly higher power consumption than normal as well. Thus likewise Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 running Windows 10 Pro will also encounter the same scenario. Some benchmarks comparisons below, higher is better…

      PassMark: Pentium N4200=2004, Snapdragon 835=650
      Cinebench R11.5 ST: Pentium N4200=0.65, Snapdragon 835=0.50
      Cinebench R11.5 MT: Pentium N4200=2.27, Snapdragon 835=1.50
      Octane v2.0: Pentium N4200=13290, Snapdragon 835=3086
      JetStream 1.1: Pentium N4200=84.572, Snapdragon 835(Edge)=80.363, Snapdragon 835(Chrome)=79.857
      Geekbench3 ST: Pentium N4200=1616, Snapdragon 835=1144
      Geekbench3 MT: Pentium N4200=4736, Snapdragon 835=3960
      Geekbench4 ST: Pentium N4200=1616, Snapdragon 835=814
      Geekbench4 MT: Pentium N4200=4729, Snapdragon 835=2952

      Except this benchmark where lower is better (note that Edge browser is native)…

      Sunspider 1.0: Snapdragon 835(Edge)=210.0ms, Pentium N4200=232.0ms, Snapdragon 835(Chrome)=2498.0ms

      Benchmark sources for Intel Pentium N4200 here https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+N4200+%40+1.10GHz (for PassMark), https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-Latitude-3189-N4200-HD-Convertible-Review.213692.0.html (for Cinebench R11.5, Octane v2.0, JetStream 1.1 and Sunspider 1.0) and https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Pentium-N4200-Notebook-Processor.182736.0.html (for Geekbench3 and Geekbench4).

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