Qualcomm is the most popular chip manufacturers, whose chip are integrated into most of the flagship smartphones of the industry. The latest chip, Snapdragon 855 has not been used by most of the people in the world and Qualcomm has already announced the chip’s successor in Mobile World Congress.
Is Qualcomm Threatened By New Entries?
Qualcomm has ruled the world with dominance for many years. But the conflicts with Apple and Apple introducing Intel chip might have threatened the image a bit. Therefore, it seems Qualcomm is trying to hold on to what belongs to it. The announcement of successor just after the launch of Snapdragon 855 could be a strong sign of the same. Also, this announcement also confirmed that users have to wait till 2020 for 5G phones.
No 5G Phones Till 2020?
The first rendition of the 5G-capable phone will come with Qualcomm’s 855 processor paired with the company’s separate X50 5G modem chip. Both Qualcomm’s 855 processor and X50 5G modem chip, will be placed beside each other, which means the smartphones including them needs to be designed larger, and bulkier. As of now Samsung Galaxy and LG V50 are incorporated with the same first-gen technology.
What Is The Difference Between Snapdragon 855 And The Successor?
While we are still waiting for these first gen 5g Phones to get hands-on, Qualcomm has announced an integrated Snapdragon chip with an inbuilt 5G modem & this chip will be available in phones in the second quarter of 2020.
Qualcomm said, “The new integrated Snapdragon 5G mobile platform features Qualcomm 5G PowerSave technology to enable smartphones with the battery life users expect today,”
Qualcomm said the following about its next-generation chipset in its press release:
“The new integrated mobile platform is the first in a roadmap of software-compatible 5G mobile platforms and takes advantage of our newly announced second-generation 5G mmWave antenna module and sub-6 GHz RFFE components and modules. The comprehensive 5G modem-to-antenna solution is designed to enable device makers to quickly and cost-effectively develop 5G smartphones for virtually any 5G network or region in the world.”
Also, with the new processor chips, Qualcomm has promised to offer same battery life as LTE phones available as of now. It is an important aspect, as a separate modem chip indicates larger batteries, which means bulkier phones.
Cristiano Amon, president of Qualcomm Inc. said in a statement,
“The integration of our breakthrough 5G multimode modem and application processing technologies into a single SoC is a major step in making 5G more widely available across regions and tiers following the wave of flagship 5G devices from the more than 20 OEMs and 20 mobile operators who have committed to launching 5G networks and mobile handsets based on our 5G modems this year.”
So, as of now, we only know a bit about this new integrated Snapdragon, we don’t know how will it perform? All we can do is wait and watch whether Qualcomm could be able to live up to the expectations.