This afternoon I received the following email from Arrow, regarding the Snapdragon Developer Kit for Windows:
Dear Valued Customer,
Please see this important message from Qualcomm:
”At Qualcomm, we are dedicated to pioneering leading technology and delivering premium experiences to our valued customers. The launch of 30+ Snapdragon X-series powered PC's is a testament to our ability to deliver leading technology and the PC industry's desire to move to our next-generation technology. However, the Developer Kit product comprehensively has not met our usual standards of excellence and so we are reaching out to let you know that unfortunately we have made the decision to pause this product and the support of it, indefinitely.
Working with the developer community is a priority for Qualcomm. If you want to learn more about Windows on Snapdragon, please engage with us on Discord or head to our developer portal on Qualcomm.com. If you are ready to build your next gen AI PC application, visit the Qualcomm Device Cloud (QDC) today.
Qualcomm has authorized a refund for any charges that have been made by Arrow.“
Based upon the above, we are working to provide a full refund for any charges to your account for your purchase. You should receive this credit/refund within 10 business days. It is not necessary to return any material, if received. Unfortunately, any outstanding orders will be cancelled.
Thank you for your understanding, Arrow
It sounds like they are cancelling all existing orders, but I'm not sure if those who did receive units will also be refunded. I'll update this post if I see a refund for it.
Update 2024-10-24: Arrow reports, "as promised, we have processed a full refund for your purchase, and it is not necessary to return the product you received."
So far I haven't seen the refund hit my credit card yet, and Arrow's online order management system isn't showing any credit/adjustment, but I guess hopefully that happens at some point!
Qualcomm's Failure to Launch
I've covered the long and drawn out struggle Qualcomm had shipping their Snapdragon X Elite Developer Kit already.
And after months of waiting—Arrow's web store originally said it would 'ship tomorrow' in July—I received my unit in late September. I did a teardown, then got to work on a full review of the Dev Kit for Windows.
My conclusion in that review was:
The Snapdragon Dev Kit is a missed opportunity.
Indeed. But hopefully Microsoft and Qualcomm can figure out a way to make a compelling small desktop offering with Snapdragon X—something not so strongly associated with the failed CoPilot+ launch.
If it happens, it sounds like Qualcomm won't be making the device, relying instead on an OEM partner.
I feel sorry for the hardware team at Qualcomm who worked on this project, because it had a lot of promise, just too many roadblocks to make it successful. Windows on Arm could certainly use more developer focus, and a great developer workstation (which is more readily available) would help with that.
Comments
Heater incoming.
Mine just arrived.... today. Talk about timing, eh?
Ha! I've heard from a few people who said they either received the box today, or it's in shipping coming tomorrow. Must've been down to the wire. Sad news, because overall the hardware's fine, and the value is okay, it's just not the thing we'd all expected many months ago when it was announced :(
How disappointing! I wasn’t particularly interested in getting a new laptop or tablet, but I was super interested in Snapdragon X Elite as a SFF PC - a consumer grade ARM server that’s much beefier than a Pi and without the ecosystem lock-in of Apple.
I worry that we won’t ever see a consumer ARM device in this factor - unless RPi or one of their competitors see the market to building something with this chip in it instead of the usual mobile SoCs…
Radxa will introduce an ARM PC to meet your requirements. The open source Apple M1 chip alternative.
Would love to see this! Will it be possible to have UEFI support so it would be possible to install Windows on Arm or Arm Linux without having to have vendor-specific image builds?
I don't get it, missed oppo how? Low DDR5 facilities? No compute-in-RAM or I3C breakout or MIPI2 camera interfaces for slapping a fluidic microscope or spectroscopy add on? Only 7 M.2 gen5 aren't enough?
Jeff, I've received my unit but haven't been refunded, because as far as I know I was never charged! As you say it's a missed opportunity, a snapdragon mac mini would be great but the dev kit isn't quite that due to noise and now doubts over driver updates.
Props for getting two Ars Technica articles citing you as their primary source in as many weeks!
Sounds like Qualcomm doesn't want to move the industry forward IMO.
I have to wonder if there are other arrangements with Intel and Microsoft that basically put up a road block that Qualcomm couldn't overcome without the support of Microsoft as a partner.
Damnit. We're in production with ARM Windows software on Microsoft DevKit 2023 devices, but they're slow enough to be a nuisance and are also cancelled. Laptops are NOT an acceptable substitute, because they don't have Ethernet. Our daily testing on each platform reads about 60GB of data and writes a couple of GB, making Wi-Fi inadequate as well as less secure.
Sad to hear
Hopefully they bring it back with better features
I wonder if this has anything to do with ARM canceling the license agreement with Qualcomm
Does anybody know where I could still get one?
That's too bad. You may be interested to know that Chris Titus on Ars Technica wrote some sort of code for Windows 11 that turned off all the Copilot features on Windows. That could be useful.
(After all, without Copilot on Windows, it would be better!)