During the industry keynote ahead of Computex 2019, Lenovo and Qualcomm worked together to reveal the world’s first 5G PC today. The laptop is an Always Connected PC (expect to see that lingo floating around a lot in the coming months), powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx 5G compute platform – a fancy term for a 7nm chipset which incorporates 5G.
Extreme is the word of the day in describing this device; Qualcomm refers to the chipset as the most extreme Snapdragon platform ever designed, with extreme performance, extreme battery life and extreme connectivity. Besides 5G compatibility, it also supports multi-gigabit LTE on today’s 4G networks, and a claim of multi-day battery life as well.
The platform combines Qualcomm’s proven X55 5G modem, which allows manufacturers to build 5G platforms compatible with sub-6GHz frequencies as well as the higher (and faster) mmWave bands.
Qualcomm’s collaboration is ushering in a new era of computing that is always on, and always connected – proving 5G presents opportunity far beyond mobile, but rather widespread connectivity that can transform how the world connects.
As someone that’s on the go almost all the time, having an always-connected PC would be a godsend for me. Unfortunately, even in today’s business laptops, 4G LTE connectivity is hard to come by, and certainly much harder in good equipment that you’d actually want it in. For example I love my Surface Book 2, but there’s no LTE option at all. Surface Pro has an LTE option, but only in some models, and notably, not the most recent.
While I have some doubts as to how powerful this Project Limitless PC could be – Snapdragon ARM processors and Windows work together alright, but they’re certainly not snappy – an always-connected device that allows me to get online quickly and anywhere would be truly helpful, especially today as I’m writing this story in Taiwan!
Always connected with a SIM PCs are not a new idea.
My 2012 purchased Toshiba 550D netbook has a slot for a mini SIM, but no-one knows of any model of that series released with the SIM hardware working. No-one knows if the SIM was for data only or data and phone.