Microsoft and Qualcomm promise once/week charging for Always Connected Windows 10 PCs
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Speaking at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Tech Summit, Microsoft’s Terry Myerson promises with Windows 10 on Snapdragon users will only have to charge their laptop once per week while still actively using the device. Terry called this a game changer, with Cristiano Amon, Executive Vice President, Qualcomm Technologies suggesting this would allow Windows 10 laptops to replace the tablet for both work and entertainment.
Always Connected PCs will be light, fanless and feature gigabit LTE. Most importantly they would be always on, always connected and offer 20 hours battery life, while still being able to run normal Windows 10 software.
Most importantly, like smartphones, users will be able to travel without needing to carry a power cord. Microsoft also sees security advantages from being able to bypass WIFI networks, which are open to man in the middle attacks.
Sprint, who also attended the event, promised easy activation, unlimited data and good technology support for the devices.
The Asus NovaGo will be one of the first devices using the platform. It has both eSIM and nanoSIM, up to 256 GB storage and 8 GB of RAM and of course powered by the Snapdragon 835 processor.
Asus promises 22-hour battery life (video playback) and 30 days of standby time, while offering Gigabit LTE via 4x carrier aggregation.
The 2:1 will support a stylus, Windows Ink and Windows Hello.
The 4GB RAM/64 GB storage version will cost only $599, while the 8GB/256 GB version will cost only $799.
The PC will be available in USA, China, Italy, UK, France, Germany and Taiwan.
Kevin Frost, VP and GM of Consumer Personal Systems at HP also presented a device at the event, the HP Envy x2.
The device looks like a Surface Pro, with a metal shell, and will also offer 20-hour battery life, but is only 6.9 mm thin (as thin as an iPhone). The tablet will be hitting the market in Spring 2018. HP did not announce pricing.
Lenovo will be showing off some devices at CES in January 2018.
Kevin Lensing Corporate VP and GM client computing AMD also attended and said they would use Qualcomm 4G LTE always connected modems with their AMD Ryzen powered notebooks to bring the advantages of being always connected to x86 devices also.
In concluding Amon said he expects Always On PCs to transform mobile computing, with high-speed low-latency computing making cloud computing as good as local storage.
See Qualcomm’s sizzle reel for Always Connected PCs below.
