About a year and a half ago, Microsoft and Qualcomm jointly announced the arrival to the market of what were to be the first convertible notebooks based on ARM processors. The idea that arose behind this need was to offer computers capable of being always connected and always on, a trend that is increasingly seen in the market and that, when the time comes, can be the turning point for a customer to become decide on a specific team.
One of the characteristics of this first generation was that for its construction, the designers decided to bet on the use of the Snapdragon 835, one of the most interesting options on the market, especially at that time but which, unfortunately, also had its problems such as the fact that the processor was not specifically designed for this new generation of computers proposed by Microsoft. From this need the new Snapdragon 850, a variation of the current Snapdragon 845 that promise a much more extensive and surprising autonomy.
Qualcomm surprises us with the presentation of the new Snapdragon 850
The idea that Qualcomm has with the landing of this processor is to meet the expectations that many users of this type of device have, such as getting their laptop to offer a autonomy greater than 20 hours as well as a better connectivity. At this point, it should be noted that the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 arrive on the market equipped with nothing less than an X20 LTE modem, apparently the first in the world to offer Cat 18 support with Gigabit LTE as well as an Adreno 630 GPU.
As you can see, on a technical level the Snapdragon 850 is practically the same as the 845 version. The main difference that we find in this new version of the SoC is that, basically, we are talking about a slightly improved version. The main difference in this regard is that the eight cores of this processor work at a maximum frequency of 2 GHz while, in the 845 version they work at 2 GHz, an operating speed that maximum reaches the four cores'Gold'of the Snapdragon 845.
The Snapdragon 850 promises a better user experience for all Windows 10 ARM-based PCs
Now, if we really compare the difference between the new Microsoft convertibles with the previous ones, let's remember that they mounted the Snapdragon 835, we talk about a yield that grows by 30%, its autonomy it is also higher by 20% while, the download speed grows by 20%. Undoubtedly, improvements that can be key for customers looking to get a team of these characteristics, which now becomes much more interesting thanks to this extension in terms of autonomy and its improvements in terms of performance and download speed.
At another point, leaving aside the improvements in terms of performance, download speed and autonomy, for me key parameters, we find that the new Microsoft equipment will now have high-fidelity audio support thanks to the incorporation of different technologies such as Qualcomm Aqstic and Qualcomm aptX, as well as the possibility of being able capture 4K video with higher quality and definition.
Thanks to Snapdragon, the convertibles that equip it will offer a range greater than 20 hours
On the part of Microsoft, thanks to the hardware level update that will reach its convertibles, certain functionalities will notably improve such as the creation of videos, security, performance when playing certain video games and even the voice assistant Cortana. New features that will be used much better after installing on new Microsoft computers the Windows 2018 April 10 Update and ARM 64 SDK.
As you will surely remember, it was in that update where important improvements were introduced such as the 64-bit version of Microsoft Edge for Windows 10 in its ARM version in addition to different changes such as one better compatibility between applications, better system performance and above all HDR / Hi-Fi audio support. Many have been the media that have not hesitated to catalog the launch of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 as not very revolutionary, curiously the same ones that seem to forget the functionality for which it has been developed, to serve as a basis for all those future convertibles based on Windows 10 ARM .