Qualcomm brings the best of mobile to Windows 10 laptops

It’s finally official, Qualcomm has announced that its Snapdragon 835 Mobile Platform will be powering future laptops and 2-in-1s. They won’t be running Android though, it’s solely a Windows 10 affair offering a fully fledged desktop PC experience on traditional smartphone hardware. But the real draw is the features that we typically associate with smartphones – particularly always on connectivity with 4G LTE.

Qualcomm calls this the “always connected PC”, ridding users of their reliance on WiFi and bringing laptops into the 4G LTE era. As well as the more useful implications for portability, the company is also bigging up the security benefits. Rather than hopping onto public WiFi networks that are the most vulnerable to “man in the middle” attacks, private LTE access is more secure. That could be a big win for enterprise users.

The other major benefit being touted by Qualcomm is battery life. Today, you’re lucky to get much more than 8 hours of serious usage out of even the more frugal laptops or Chromebooks. However, Qualcomm estimates that it can easily offer a full day’s worth of battery life, meaning that customers might only need to charge their Snapdragon 835 powered laptop once per week. Standby time also shoots up, boasting up to 4 to 5x the standby time of current laptops and offering up to one month of standby time.

You can check out just what Qualcomm envisions for the combination of the Snapdragon 835 and Windows 10 in the video below.

As for devices, ASUS took to the stage to unveil its Nova GO laptop, the world’s first laptop with support for Gigabit LTE data speeds. It supports eSIM and Nano SIM to get users online with 4G, along with 8GB of RAM and up to 256GB of UFS 2.0 storage, which will feel like very familiar specs to even high-end laptop owners. The Nova GO also boasts up to 22 hours of screen-on-time, 30 days standby, along with Windows Ink and Cortana support. The laptop will start at $599 for the 4GB / 64GB model, and $799 for the 8GB / 238GB model. Other brands are expected to announce similar devices soon.

What do you think about prospect of Windows 10 laptops powered by the Snapdragon 835? Does it give Chromebook fans something else to think about, could Qualcomm made serious inroads into the enterprise space? Let us know what you think.