Qualcomm did a great job on the first and the second generation "Always Connected" PC based on the mobile phone SoCs but the purpose-built approach with a much bigger GPU was something that was needed to get this platform to be a serious competitor in the fanless and thin and light market.
The revolution that Qualcomm ehas nabled is to leave your battery charger at home even for multiple day trips as the company has deep knowledge in ultra-low power consumption with connectivity. Once you try the ACPC from Qualcomm, the Always Connected and Always On PC is a missing link in the evolution of PCs.
In addition to 5G, every 8CX laptop comes out of the box with Cat 22, 2.5 Gbps 4G modem too. The Lenovo project limitless has the X55 modem, one that will likely to be in the next iPhone too.
The X55 comes with 7Gbps peak download speed and 3 Gbps peak upload speed and 2.5 Gbps on 4G LTE download and 316 Gbps upload.
“Our collaboration with Lenovo will deliver transformative PC user experiences for both consumers and the enterprise thanks to the platform’s performance and power efficiency, combined with the high speed, low-latency connectivity made possible by 5G,” said Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and general manager, mobile business unit, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “Bandwidth-intensive tasks that involve downloading and uploading large files over a wireless connection can be exponentially faster, "making remote storage feel as seamless as local storage", this will change the way users create, collaborate and communicate with their computing devices.”
“At Lenovo, we don’t innovate for the sake of technology alone. Everything we do is about improving people’s experience,” said Johnson Jia, senior vice president, and general manager, Consumer Business of Intelligent Devices Group, Lenovo. “With real 5G in a PC, it’s all about satisfying users’ need for speed: faster file transfers and streaming in 4K, 8K and even AR/VR; faster and higher quality video chats on-the-go; even faster screen refreshes for mobile gaming. When we say limitless connectivity, we mean it – 5G PC users the world-over will save time, stay productive, or get online entertainment from nearly anywhere, at any time.”
Naturally, after 4G comes the 5G version of an Always On, Always Connected PC as the drive for 4K and later 8K video will use enormous amounts of bandwidth. All the analysis show that data consumption is increasing with each quarter and that video drives that consumption.
Consumers can expect more to come from Lenovo and Qualcomm in early 2020. CES 2020 perhaps?
