Qualcomm's Phone Chip DNA Powers Microsoft's New Surface Laptops
Microsoft has unveiled its latest Surface laptops, which run on Qualcomm's Snapdragon Elite X2 chips. The new devices include the 12-inch Surface Pro and 13-inch Surface Laptop, both of which have been upgraded with improved performance and battery life.
The Snapdragon Elite X2 chip was introduced at last year's Snapdragon Summit and is designed to bring smartphone-level performance to laptops. According to Microsoft Corporate VP of Surface Devices Brett Ostrum, the new devices have superior cameras thanks to the image signal processing on the Elite X2 chips, which were inherited from phone camera hardware.
Ostrum stated that the new Surface devices have taken the top spots in DxOMark's laptop rankings for camera quality, surpassing Apple's MacBook Pro models. He attributed this improvement to Qualcomm's investment in ISP and the camera pipeline, rather than just better camera hardware.