At Mobile World Congress this year, HP announced the long awaited Elite x3, a Windows 10 Mobile device powered by a Snapdragon 820 that wouldn't be coming until this summer. This led many to speculate about why it wouldn't be released until summer, suggesting that it would be released alongside the Anniversary Update - or Redstone 1, as it was known at the time.

But what did the Elite x3 need from Redstone? Microsoft's mobile platform has historically been slow to embrace silicon innovation, so was it waiting for Snapdragon 820 support? According to MSDN documentation, no; the platform supports the chipset right now, as well as the unannounced Snapdragon 830.

The full list is MSM8994, MSM8992, MSM8952, MSM8909, MSM8208, MSM8996, MSM8953, and MSM8998. This translates to Snapdragon 810, 808, 617, 210, 208, 820, 625, and 830, in that order.

The page also lists support for APQ8092, APQ8094, and APQ8009 in Wi-Fi only devices that run Windows 10 Mobile Enterprise. Those refer to Snapdragon 808, 810, and 210.

Finally, below that, there's a plethora of chipsets that can be upgraded to Windows 10 Mobile, which interestingly enough, contains all of the Snapdragon S4 SoCs that weren't allowed an official Windows 10 Mobile upgrade. Perhaps more interesting is that the minimum system requirements have been bumped up to 1 GB RAM.

What might be more unsurprising is that of the three lists, there are only Qualcomm chipsets listed. Windows 10 Mobile has still not added support for anything that's made by MediaTek or any other ARM chip OEM.

It's refreshing to see Microsoft staying ahead of the curve for once. Windows Phone 8 only supported the dual-core Snapdragon S4 chipsets. The Lumia 1020 was released with that SoC at a time when Android phones were shipping with the quad-core Snapdragon 800.

Windows Phone 8 Update 3 brought support for the quad-core Snapdragon 800, in preparation for Windows Phone 8.1, which also brought support for the quad-core Snapdragon 200 and 400. Of course, this was at a time when Android phones were shipping with the Snapdragon 801.

Yes, Windows phones have historically been one step behind. In fact, the HP Elite x3 was announced on the same day as the LG G5 and the Galaxy S7, making that the first time that a Windows phone has been one of the first handsets to be announced with a brand new flagship chipset.

The rumor mill says that the Snapdragon 830 will have a 10 nm process, support up to 8 GB RAM, and that it will use the Kryo technology that Qualcomm has implemented in the Snapdragon 820. The GPU will likely be upgraded from the Adreno 530 as well, probably to Adreno 630.

Source: MSDN