Category: Qualcomm

Chip manufacture Qualcomm has confirmed that they are interested in providing their SoC solutions for Chromebooks, but only on premium devices.  The news came from PCMag which reported that the company’s new director of product management, Monte Giles, is only interested if the average sale price of Chromebooks goes up higher.

“if the Chromebook market stays at sub-$300 [average selling prices] it’s not that interesting to us,” Giles said. Qualcomm wants to make premium Chromebooks, apparently. “What we’re watching closely is when the [average selling prices] start to go above $500.”

This would sit well with previous commits that suggest a Qualcomm-based Chromebook found in the Chrome OS Gerrit.

Yesterday Qualcomm made several important announcements around their Snapdragon chip lineup and with the introduction of Quick Charge 3.0.  The latest update to the rapid charging solution, which will be available in the new lineup of Snapdragon processors, is said to give users up to 70% of their battery life back in under 30 minutes of charging time.  It is an impressive 38% efficiency increase over the Quick Charge 2.0 standard and with ever power hungry devices in our hands and pockets, is certainly to be a welcome addition.

The problem however is that Quick Charge in general masks a bigger problem within mobile tech which is the desperate need for newer, more advanced battery technology.  Fundamentally, while battery life has improved and batteries have become more efficient, they remain the single largest problem facing mobile technology use which in my mind makes it just as important as being able to quickly charge devices.