Discontinuation of ARM Notebook with Snapdragon X Elite SoC
2025-11-21 13:32:11
In the past 18 months, we have been working on an ARM notebook based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X1 Elite SoC (X1E). At this point, we are putting the project on hold. There are several reasons for this.
Less suitable than expected
Development turned out to be challenging due to the different architecture, and in the end, the first-generation X1E proved to be less suitable for Linux than expected. In particular, the long battery runtimes—usually one of the strong arguments for ARM devices—were not achieved under Linux. A viable approach for BIOS updates under Linux is also missing at this stage, as is fan control. Virtualization with KVM is not foreseeable on our model, nor are the high USB4 transfer rates. Video hardware decoding is technically possible, but most applications lack the necessary support.
Given these conditions, investing several more months of development time does not seem sensible, as it is not foreseeable that all the features you can rightfully expect would be available in the end. In addition, we would be offering you a device with what would then be a more than two-year-old Snapdragon X Elite (X1E), whose successor, the Snapdragon X2 Elite (X2E), was officially introduced in September 2025 and is expected to become available in the first half of 2026.
Resumption possible
We will continue to monitor developments and evaluate the X2E at the appropriate time for its Linux suitability. If it meets expectations and we can reuse a significant portion of our work on the X1E, we may resume development. How much of our groundwork can be transferred to the X2E can only be assessed after a detailed evaluation of the chip.
Many thanks to Linaro
We would like to explicitly thank the ARM specialists at
Linaro for the excellent collaboration. We will contribute the
Device Tree we developed, along with further work, to the mainline kernel and thereby help improve Linux support for compatible devices, e.g. the Medion SPRCHRGD, and thus make our work available to the community.
