Qualcomm’s big entrance into the laptop market last year got a lot of attention and now, leaks about its next-gen Snapdragon laptop chips are slowly starting to emerge. Known Weibo leaker Fixed Focus Digital claims that boost clock speeds will start at 4.4 GHz and estimates performance gains between 18 and 22%.
Second-generation Qualcomm Nuvia: big core clock starts at 4.4GHz,
performance improvement estimated at 18–22%. pic.twitter.com/XEc4sPDBm2
Since official information doesn’t exist yet and leaks are few, we don’t know a lot about the next Snapdragon chip right now — including what it’ll be called. At the moment, some people are calling it the Snapdragon X Elite 2 and others are going with Snapdragon X2 Elite. The leaked information we do have includes a core count of 18 and a launch date of around October 2025 — but it’s all just rumors for now.
The prospect of a 4.4 GHz boost clock speed is very interesting, however, since it suggests that the base clock speed could be higher too. Because higher clock speeds always equal more heat, Qualcomm likely had to find a way to improve thermals to make this happen. Dealing with heat in a laptop is pretty difficult since there’s limited space for fans, but Qualcomm may have found a better way to keep things cool or they may have figured out how to make components even smaller — because the smaller something is, the less heat it generates. Current Snapdragon chips use 4 nm tech but we’re not sure yet if next-gen will use 3 nm or even 2 nm (though the latter isn’t expected until 2026).
The performance gains mentioned in the leak are probably considering additional factors other than the clock speeds, however, since the clock speeds themselves are not 18 to 22% faster than the last generation. There are many different areas Qualcomm could have adjusted and improved on to make these performance gains, so it’s hard to guess without any additional information.
The success of Qualcomm’s new chips doesn’t rest solely on power, however. While its team-up with Microsoft brought plenty of media attention, the software problems Windows-on-Arm brought with it were also substantial. At the moment, Snapdragon X Elite laptops are known for being frequently returned, but that’s almost entirely due to compatibility and software issues with Windows, rather than problems with the hardware.
Either way, Qualcomm has high aspirations for its laptop chips, so it will be interesting to see how they approach things this time around.
Speech-to-text apps have flooded the App Store, making it easier than ever to type on our Macs with just our voice. I have previously covered one such app called TypeWhisper. However, there has been a dearth of good text-to-speech models, and most of the good ones are locked behind a subscription.
Ollama, an open-source app that lets you run local AI models on your computer, wants to change that. It works on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and your prompts are never stored or used for training.
Did you think hitting delete on your AI chatbot conversation actually makes it disappear? Georgia Tech researchers just proved that's not entirely true. They have built a forensic tool called ORISA that can dig deleted conversations from your phone and even rebuild them into a working chatbot session you can keep talking to.
How can ORISA bring deleted AI conversations back?
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).