- Intel has long been the leader in PC processors.
In fact, if you've bought a PC in the past
couple of years, odds are it's had an Intel processor.
But Qualcomm is looking to change things.
They've already come out with the Snapdragon 835
running on a couple of Windows devices,
but they're going in big with the Snapdragon 850,
which is the first Qualcomm processor designed
specifically for running Windows hardware.
And I gotta tell you, I got to try it today,
and it is impressive.
I'm Derek, with Windows Central
at Computex 2018, let's take a look.
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There are a couple of things that you need
to know about the Snapdragon 850.
It is in a lot of ways an upgraded version of the 845.
We're just talking about it having a
better platform, hardware wise, to work on.
It can handle better thermals and has a
lot more battery power to work with so
it can run at higher speeds.
We're talking about 30% faster performance,
20% better power efficiency,
and even improved LTE speeds with an
upgraded LTE modem that can do up to
1.2 gigabits worth of download speeds,
which is just insanely fast.
Far faster than you can get, say,
on an Intel powered LTE modem on a Surface.
It's nice to have a connected PC,
but this takes it to a whole other level.
This performance actually does come into real life use.
Qualcomm is targeting sort of mainstream
devices with the Snapdragon 850.
They're looking at $500 to $800 range
for hardware running with this processor.
And so they're comparing it to
everyday sort of computing tasks.
We're talking about web browsing,
some word processing, your email.
Some light gaming.
And at that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 really excels.
We're going to check out a couple of different games,
both in 32 bit and 64 bit compiled for ARM,
as well as even an emulated x86 app,
and I gotta tell ya, it worked out really well.
I was impressed; I would not have known that we
were looking at emulated software.
They do have a lot of Microsoft support to thank for that.
Microsoft has done a lot of work in making sure
that developers can easily compile apps
for both x86 processors and ARM processors,
both 32 bit and 64 bit, with ease.
It's a simple one click button in Visual Studio and bam,
you've got an app that works on both platforms.
Users don't even have to worry about
which one they're downloading.
Go to the Windows store, it's gonna
automatically display the best version for you,
you click download, you've got it, and it'll work great.
This can't possibly be powerful enough to do
heavy lifting, like Photoshop.
I gotta tell you, it can.
Of course, it's not high powered PC.
We're not talking about a computer that's going
to compete with the $1500 and $2000
powerhouse laptops and desktops that you're used to.
They're targeting much lower price range with this.
More mainstream computing.
And average users don't use Photoshop and Premier.
People like me, I do, and this isn't for me, yet.
But, if I just need a light tablet or computer
to take with me out on the road just to do some light work,
to write some articles, it'll be great.
And if I need to edit photos, it can actually do it.
Another advantage of the Qualcomm Snapdragon platform
is that these PC's are always connected.
And that's more connected than we're used to,
say with the Intel chips, with their LTE modems.
When you press the power button on
an Intel powered computer, it turns off,
or hibernates, it goes to sleep, it disconnects.
And it doesn't reconnect until you turn it back on.
With the Qualcomm PC's it actually acts more like a phone.
Very familiar user experience that you're very used to.
You continue to get your notifications,
your emails continue to come in,
your Skype calls will ring through.
It works exactly like you would expect
from a phone platform, but on a laptop.
And that completely changes the way
that you start thinking about it,
because you can just sit down and open it up
and everything is right there, ready to go.
You don't have to wait for it to power up,
reconnect, and start re-downloading everything.
It's instant, and it's there,
and it's a very simple concept,
but it can really change the way
that you work and interact with your computer.
One of the problems that has plagued
the current generation of thin and light
Intel powered computers is heat management.
We've seen a lot of manufacturers
put a lot of effort into managing
the heat that's produced by these processors.
With the Snapdragon processor it's a lot different
because they run a lot cooler.
It's easy to quote a 12 or 13 hour battery life
on an Intel powered computer if all your battery tests
consists of is running a video on loop.
That's not how people actually use computers.
They're downloading websites, they're uploading to Facebook,
they're playing games, they're actively using
that processor and drawing on that battery.
So real life battery estimates
are a lot different than those tests would indicate.
On the Snapdragon 850 platform however,
the power draw is actually a lot lower
than it is on an Intel powered device.
And so you can get a lot better battery life
out of the same battery,
and it generates less heat at the same time.
So you don't have to have
as aggressive thermal management,
it's not gonna throttle down as readily,
and you'll be able to keep computing
at full power for longer.
That also means that they can make thinner
and more flexibly designed devices than we're used to.
We've already seen that with devices like the HP-NVX2.
It's a thin, almost iPad like tablet,
but it's running full Windows 10
because it's running off of the Snapdragon 835.
That's gonna get even better with the Snapdragon 850.
We're gonna have a proliferation of form factors
and devices running on this platform
that just simply haven't been possible up to this point.
And when it comes to apps there's more
than just UWP's and x86 apps.
We're seeing a lot of web apps coming around.
And while we're seeing more PWA's coming out,
like the Twitter app, we're also seeing a lot
of apps that are based on Chromium running
in Electron shells, like WhatsApp and Slack.
And those don't perform great on Intel devices,
and right now they're not performing
terribly well on the Qualcomm devices,
because they're going through emulation.
But Qualcomm is actually working to build
an ARM compatible version of the Chromium shell
so a lot of these apps will actually perform
even better on the Snapdragon platform
than they do right now on Intel.
Which, I really look forward to
'cause we use Slack a lot and to be honest
it's not really that great as an app,
but if it can be I would be really excited by that.
So that's been just our first look
at the Snapdragon 850 running on Windows devices.
These are just reference hardware devices
that Qualcomm has built and we can expect
the first devices with the Snapdragon 850
to be coming out around the holiday timeframe
of 2018, so in just a couple of months.
And I'm really looking forward to it,
'cause it's a very impressive feat of engineering.
And the fact that it can run as well as it does,
really makes me excited for the future of this platform.
The Snapdragon 851, the Snapdragon 900,
in future more powerful, more efficient devices
that will be more capable than what we have today.
These first devices are targeting a mainstream user,
so we're looking at about a $500 to $800 range,
targeting you know, the kind of people who would buy iPads
but now they can buy a Windows powered tablet
or laptop or ultra-portable instead.
And it will work fantastically well,
getting great battery life,
being always connected,
and have a pretty decent price
for what you're getting out of it.
So that's been our first look at the
Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 running Windows 10.
It's a really impressive platform
and I'm really looking forward to when
these devices come out and getting
to spend more time with them.
I'm Derek with Windows Central, thanks for watching.