Microsoft: Qualcomm Snapdragon-Powered Windows 10 Laptops Will Provide Multi-Day Battery Life
Windows 10 laptops powered by Qualcomm's flagship mobile processor, the Snapdragon 835, are eventually coming. Microsoft announced as much way back at the end of last year, and talked a little more about these laptops this week at Qualcomm's annual 5G Summit in Hong Kong. One of the more interesting tidbits to emerged involved battery life—apparently these laptops will last longer than a day before needing to be charged.
As it stands now, all-day battery life is not super common in the laptop world, though there have been gains made in the past couple of years. Take Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon, for example. It lasted nearly 9 hours in our home brewed video loop test that we use to test the battery life of laptops. Most laptops do not come close to that, but Microsoft is optimistic that we will be surprised by what is coming.
Pete Bernard, Principal Group Manager for Connectivity Partners at Microsoft, told Trust Reviews that battery life on these upcoming laptops is "really, really good."
"To be frank, it’s actually beyond our expectations,” Bernard added. "We set a high bar for [our developers], and we’re now beyond that. It’s the kind of battery life where I use it on a daily basis. I don’t take my charger with me. I may charge it every couple of days or so. It’s that kind of battery life."
Multi-day battery life would be a game changing development in mobile computing, and indeed that is exactly how Bernard describes it. And not only is this promising for consumers, it is catching developers off guard.
"One of the funny anecdotes is we handed out these devices to all of our dev directors and leaders across the Windows organization, and we started getting all these bug reports back ... saying 'the battery meter's not working, it says I still have a full charge'," Bernard told ZDNet "It turned out not to be a bug; it just has a great battery life. So people are getting used to this concept of having a device that you don't have to charge, and at the same time people are getting used to this notion of being always connected and having a device with that LTE connectivity built in."
When Microsoft first announced these laptops, it figured they would release before the end of 2017. Microsoft is still pushing that time frame, with announcements expected in the next few weeks. In the meantime, it continues to test various models—hundreds of them are being used in Redmond on a daily basis, according to Bernard.
As it stands, just three manufacturers are on board with building Windows 10 PCs with Snapdragon inside. They include ASUS, HP, and Lenovo. If these laptops are a hit, however, it is reasonable to expect that other manufacturers will follow suit.
As it stands now, all-day battery life is not super common in the laptop world, though there have been gains made in the past couple of years. Take Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon, for example. It lasted nearly 9 hours in our home brewed video loop test that we use to test the battery life of laptops. Most laptops do not come close to that, but Microsoft is optimistic that we will be surprised by what is coming.
Pete Bernard, Principal Group Manager for Connectivity Partners at Microsoft, told Trust Reviews that battery life on these upcoming laptops is "really, really good."
"To be frank, it’s actually beyond our expectations,” Bernard added. "We set a high bar for [our developers], and we’re now beyond that. It’s the kind of battery life where I use it on a daily basis. I don’t take my charger with me. I may charge it every couple of days or so. It’s that kind of battery life."
Multi-day battery life would be a game changing development in mobile computing, and indeed that is exactly how Bernard describes it. And not only is this promising for consumers, it is catching developers off guard.
"One of the funny anecdotes is we handed out these devices to all of our dev directors and leaders across the Windows organization, and we started getting all these bug reports back ... saying 'the battery meter's not working, it says I still have a full charge'," Bernard told ZDNet "It turned out not to be a bug; it just has a great battery life. So people are getting used to this concept of having a device that you don't have to charge, and at the same time people are getting used to this notion of being always connected and having a device with that LTE connectivity built in."
When Microsoft first announced these laptops, it figured they would release before the end of 2017. Microsoft is still pushing that time frame, with announcements expected in the next few weeks. In the meantime, it continues to test various models—hundreds of them are being used in Redmond on a daily basis, according to Bernard.
As it stands, just three manufacturers are on board with building Windows 10 PCs with Snapdragon inside. They include ASUS, HP, and Lenovo. If these laptops are a hit, however, it is reasonable to expect that other manufacturers will follow suit.
