Faster Windows 10 Mobile Devices Promised by Microsoft, Qualcomm

For one, it’s finally revealing the official system specifications you’ll need to run the $300 Windows 10 VR headsets, which will be built by the likes of Dell, HP and Lenovo.

At its WinHEC 2016 opening keynote in Shenzhen, China Thursday morning, Microsoft revealed its plans to make mixed reality mainstream in 2017 by opening up its Windows Holographic technologies to its partner ecosystem.

According to Qualcomm, we should see new Snapdragon 835 processing units coming out that offer compatibility for Windows 10-operated laptops. Running Windows 10 on ARM CPUs should make very energy efficient ARM powered laptops possible that can run longer on a single charge than now possible with x86 based laptops. Terry Myerson, executive vice president of the Windows and Devices Group, didn’t mention smartphones in a blog post announcing the news. Microsoft isn’t detailing exactly how its emulation works, but developers won’t have to do anything special to get their apps to run on ARM chips. Windows RT had some limitations that kept it from taking off. It was called Windows RT and it only ran a subset of Windows apps and Microsoft ultimately killed the project. As tantalizing as the prospect of running full-featured Windows software on ARM-based devices may be, Microsoft isn’t neglecting its longtime partner Intel. This announcement promises that upcoming Qualcomm chips will have the chops to handle that kind of hardware, run apps like Photoshop, run efficiently on battery, and ship at consumer-friendly price points. The company’s choice to limit application support was especially disappointing because the company had gone to the trouble of porting the traditional Win32 API to ARM in order to have a version of Office that was pre-installed on Windows RT devices.

By using Qualcomm’s ARM chips instead of Intel’s X86-based processors, Microsoft hopes to enable a new generation of Windows 10-native mobile devices like tablets and laptops.

That’s where Windows 10 Mobile entered the picture. Perhaps more interesting than the HoloLens itself, though, is seeing how other companies remix the technology in different ways. I’m assuming that means Fall 2017 for Windows 10 on Qualcomm, too. These devices may arrive next year. “With Windows 10 on cellular PCs, we will help everyone make the most of the air around them”, said Microsoft. Planned features include far-field speech controls, so users can ask Cortana a question from across the room, advances in biometric authentication with Windows Hello, more affordable PCs and headsets to support virtual reality, and support for 4K, HDR, WCG and spatial audio in gaming. That will change with Microsoft announcing a partnership with Qualcomm that will see Windows 10 come to ARM-powered devices.

Microsoft will be offering Windows 10 on Qualcomm to OEMs across a variety of categories, including 6-, 10- and 14-inch categories, Myerson told me.

This doesn’t spell the end of Windows 10 Mobile, although the phone-centric version of the OS is on life support with very low sales.

That said, the aforementioned emulation layer included in Windows 10 for Qualcomm is not now created to work on Windows phones, Myerson said.