Qualcomm has announced a second-generation Snapdragon 7c Arm-powered processor that’s designed to be used inside entry-level Windows PCs and Chromebooks. The biggest change to the Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 (the official name) appears to be a clock speed bump, which Anandtech reports is a jump from 2.4GHz to 2.55GHz. And like the original Snapdragon 7c, it offers integrated LTE connectivity so you can connect to cellular networks, and Qualcomm promises it will support “multi-day battery life.”
Outside of the faster CPU, the 7c Gen 2 is more or less the same chip Qualcomm announced in 2019. It features an Adreno 618 GPU and Snapdragon X15 LTE modem. The latter allows the 7c Gen 2 to hit theoretical download speeds of 800 Mbps. As with its predecessor, the chip is designed for education and price-conscious customers. According to Qualcomm, we can expect the first Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 laptops to arrive this summer, with the first models coming from Lenovo.
Qualcomm is also going up against Apple and its powerful M1 chip, which you can now find in MacBook Airs, MacBook Pros, Mac Minis, iMacs, and iPad Pros. Those devices are all more expensive than the type of machine the Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 is targeted for, however, and it’s possible Qualcomm’s new chip could bring some of the benefits of Arm-based processors to lower-cost (and non-Apple) devices.
