- Windows 11 26H1 confirmed to be only for Snapdragon X2 laptops
- That was always the probability, and Asus has let the truth slip, although we haven’t heard back directly from Microsoft.
- Version 26H1 won’t have any new features, it will just work under the hood to pave the way for the X2 SoC, but one concern is that bugs will appear.
A laptop maker has confirmed that Windows 11 26H1 is exclusive to PCs with Arm processors, specifically Qualcomm Snapdragon chips.
Windows Central reports that Asus has said that its ZenBook A14 and A16 laptops, which have the new Snapdragon X2 inside, will ship with Windows 11 version 26H1 installed around March or April. However, the ZenBook S14 and S16 laptops that came out around the same time and have AMD and Intel CPUs will run Windows 11 25H2 (the current version of the operating system).
Microsoft told us late last year that version 26H1 will include “platform changes to support specific silicon” and that it was not an update for 25H2, leading to speculation that it would be a specific version just for Snapdragon laptops.
This is already effectively confirmed, although it should be noted that Microsoft has not yet done so directly.
What this means is that Windows 11 26H1 is being built specifically for these Arm PCs with underlying changes to support Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X2 processors.
In other words, there are no new features with version 26H1, without a hint of AI in sight (ahem). There will just be a lot of tinkering under the hood, all of which you won’t actually see, to ensure the Snapdragon
None of the content in this update will be required for x86 CPUs (AMD and Intel), so you will not get 26H1. Instead, Microsoft will work on 26H2 and add new features there, which all Windows 11 PCs (Arm, AMD, and Intel) will receive later this year (in the same period when the big annual update is usually released, between September and October).
Analysis: we hope that ‘Bromo’ is not as volatile as its namesake
As Windows Central points out, the new underlying platform for Windows 26H1 is codenamed Bromine. You may remember that Windows 11 24H2 also first arrived on Arm PCs in mid-2024, before its general release to all computers later that year, and arrived on a new platform codenamed Germanium.
So what Microsoft is doing now mirrors the launch of the original Snapdragon chips in 2024, whereby an early version of the operating system (no new features, just the underlying platform changes) is being rolled out to ensure these laptops run well. The only difference is that this time we have an ‘H1’ release (presumably because it’s so early in the year, or maybe just for better differentiation).
In short, there’s not much to see here, but it rings an alarm bell for me. If you remember, Windows 11 24H2 came with a huge number of bugs, and my personal theory was that the switch to underlying Germanium, and the large number of tweaks and modifications there, could be one of the reasons for the avalanche of bugs that emerged after that release.
Am oh really Hoping not to repeat this with Bromine, considering Microsoft is once again messing with the guts of its desktop operating system. However, at least this time Microsoft is simply refining what it already has for Arm silicon, and it won’t be as much of an effort as it was to implement Germanium. So in theory, there are a lot fewer vines here for Microsoft to trip over or get tangled up in.
Theories are great, of course, until they are put into practice, and we will see how it comes to fruition, but the point remains: a platform change like this carries risks in terms of unwanted side effects. Forgive my pessimism, but Microsoft can make a simple change like bringing dark mode to File Explorer and cause a persistent, seriously irritating and jarring flashbang error. Or a simple monthly update can completely break Task Manager and fail to close it.
Bromine shouldn’t be a problem in the grand scheme of things, but neither should those errors, and others, have been.
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