Windows ARM - Hardware and Software News

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Microsoft is set to unveil new Surface devices in less than two days, and with some leaked images already on the internet, famous leakster Evan Blass has gone ahead and revealed the design of three of the upcoming devices. In a series of tweets, Blass shows off the Surface Pro 7, both size variants of the Surface Laptop 3, and the awaited ARM-powered Surface.

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Last week, Microsoft released .NET Core 3.0 along with a plethora of updates for its developer tools. Now, to go along with that, the company has announced the release of the Windows 10 WinRT API Pack.

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Microsoft's big Surface launch event is just days away at this point, and FrAndroid says it has the scoop. A few things that we're expecting to see is the Surface Pro 7, a Snapdragon-powered Surface tablet, and Surface Laptop 3 in 13.5- and 15-inch flavors. Today's report shares some details on those devices.

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IFA 2019 Is Windows on Arm a thing? Yes, both Samsung and Lenovo had models on display at IFA in Berlin. But it has yet to take off with the great majority of laptops running Intel or AMD chipsets. Windows on Arm runs either applications compiled for ARM32 or ARM64, or x86 applications under emulation. It will not run x64 applications.

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There are only a handful of Windows on ARM devices on the market, those being PCs that use Qualcomm Snapdragon processors and run either native ARM apps or emulated x86 apps. I had only known about two from the latest generation, the Snapdragon 850, until May. When I spoke to the Windows on ARM team at Microsoft's Build conference, I found out about the China-exclusive MateBook E.

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In the U.S., so far only two PCs have launched with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 chipset for an "always-connected PC" (ACPC) experience: Samsung's Galaxy Book2 and the Lenovo Yoga C630. Both devices are great, but a third one is only available in China: Huawei's MateBook E. I'm in China this week with Huawei, and I managed to get my hands on this 2-in-1 PC. Here are my thoughts.

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I wasn't expecting to like the Galaxy Book S as much as I did. After all, based on the teaser video Samsung showed during its Unpacked keynote today, the laptop looked pretty unassuming. Let that be a lesson to learn, though -- don't judge a book by its company-approved cover photo. After I picked up the computer at Samsung's demo area here at Unpacked, I was immediately impressed by how thin and premium it felt.

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Samsung's Galaxy Book2 was definitely one of the better Windows on ARM PCs to be released so far, being one of only three Snapdragon 850 PCs and packing a Super AMOLED display. But it appears that the Korean company might have something new in store from the Windows on ARM department called the Galaxy Space, as was spotted on Geekbench by Windows Latest.

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If you're using a Snapdragon-powered Windows 10 PC, then you're probably looking forward to Microsoft's Chromium-powered Edge browser. Unfortunately, it's not available in an ARM64 flavor just yet, so if you install it, you'll still get the emulated x86 version.

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Last week at Computex, Qualcomm finally showed the world how its new Snapdragon 8cx mobile platform performs in real-world benchmarks. The 8cx was announced back in December during Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Tech Summit, but we didn’t have a good idea about how well the platform fares against Intel chips because Qualcomm only shared the raw specifications and a few technical demonstrations.

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Microsoft’s migration from EdgeHTML to Chromium for Microsoft Edge browser opens the door to a whole new series of opportunities for Windows 10.

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Everybody knows already that Windows 10 Mobile as a platform is pretty much dead, and devices that run it would become obsolete once Microsoft stops shipping security updates this coming December.

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Microsoft is pushing hard for its Windows 10 ARM platform, and while the company is working with software developers to optimize their apps and support this project, it’s also accelerating its hardware efforts in this regard.

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Make no mistake, the days of everyone using an ARM-powered laptop or desktop is still several years, or longer, away. But it’s not hard to see how one day, the idea of using a SnapDragon chip instead of something from Intel or AMD for your laptop will become a wide-spread reality.

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• google

One of the benefits of Microsoft’s transition to Chromium is that Google itself has become more interested in bringing its apps and services to Windows 10. And Windows 10 ARM as a platform is likely to get several improvements only thanks to this, as Microsoft worked together with Google engineers to prepare the Chromium engine for ARM-based devices.