While industry journalists lust after an Apple M1 Mac-like computing experiences for Windows 10 and ChromeOS devices, it seems like Qualcomm is quietly seeding the ground for a proliferation of entry-level computers instead.
According to a report from WinFuture, Qualcomm is readying a follow up to its first generation Snapdragon 7c that powered a handful of low cost Windows 10 PCs and Chromebooks at the beginning of 2020, with an octa-core SC7295 follow up. The Snapdragon SC7295 will supposedly support a maximum clock speed of 2.7GHz that will be locked to one core at a time while other cores oscillate between 1.8GHz and 2.4GHz.
As currently rumored, the upcoming Snapdragon SC7295 represents a minor spec bump and modular improvement on speed. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be a lot of information regarding 5G support, but the chip should retain its current 4G LTE support, advanced DPD, WPA3, multi-frame noise reduction (MFNR) and multi-frame super resolution (MFSR), Forward-looking electronic image stabilization(EIS), Wi-Fi 802.11ac, 4K HDR playback resolution, Qualcomm Artificial Intelligence Engine and Bluetooth 5.0 from last year.
Despite the chip being available to ChromeOS devices, Microsoft is presumably looking at the new SC72965 as another equalizer in its head-to-head competition with Chromebooks going forward, enabling the company to help manufactures produce competent 2-in-1 designed for classrooms at scale.
