Qualcomm presents Snapdragon 850-soc for Windows 10 devices

Qualcomm presented the Snapdragon 850-soc in Taipei, a slightly faster variant of the Snapdragon 845. The soc ends up in the successors of the so-called ‘always on’ devices with Windows 10, which now use the Snapdragon 835.

The new soc is made on the same 10nm process as the Snapdragon 845 soc for smartphones. Here too, Qualcomm refers to the eight processor cores as Kryo 385, where the 845-soc already suspected that it concerns modified Cortex A75 cores. The maximum clock speed with the 850 variant is slightly higher than with the 845-soc, respectively, there is a maximum speed of 2.96GHz and 2.8GHz. Compared to the predecessor, the 835 version, there is a bigger difference because it ran at 2.45GHz. The new soc uses an Adreno 630 GPU, a Hexagon 685 dsp and a Spectra 280 isp.

Compared to the Snapdragon 835, the new 850-soc should deliver 25 percent longer battery life and 30 percent faster processor and graphics performance. Qualcomm speaks in the announcement of a battery life of 25 hours with continuous use. Just like the Snapdragon 845, an X20 modem is also present here, with which a maximum speed of 1.2 Gbit/s can be achieved. Furthermore, Qualcomm talks about improved performance in the field of artificial intelligence compared to the previous generation.

The chip manufacturer expects Windows 10 devices running on the Snapdragon 850-soc to be released later this year. According to previous rumors, manufacturers such as Asus, HP and Lenovo are working on these types of devices. Asus and HP presented the first laptops with the Snapdragon 835 in December. In the case of Asus, it was a NovaGo 2-in-1 with a 13.3″ screen. HP then presented a 12.3″ tablet with a detachable keyboard. Microsoft refers to these types of devices as ‘always on’ or ‘always connected’ because, like a smartphone, they could always be on and have a long standby time.