Qualcomm-powered 5G devices may arrive in 2018

 

 

Verizon has stated that it's aiming to implement 5G at some point in 2017, but today, a mobile chip giant has given us a more specific time frame. At the Qualcomm 4G/5G Summit in Hong Kong, the company announced its very first 5G modem, the Snapdragon X50, which will support download speeds at up to 5 Gbps -- a super impressive number considering that we've only just started tapping into the Gigabit space with 4G LTE, let alone the more common 450 Mbps, 300 Mbps or even just 150 Mbps download speeds on our phones these days. 

 

Furthermore, we're told that X50-powered devices "are expected to be available during the first half of 2018." Qualcomm does stress that this modem is designed for early 5G deployments, in the sense that it's leaning more towards the experimental soft rollouts. There's also no word on the specific type of devices -- be it mobile routers or smartphones -- that the X50 will land on, so don't expect to hear any flagship product to be announced with this chip any time soon.
The whopping 5 Gbps download speed is achieved by using a generous 800 MHz bandwidth in the mmWave spectrum. While it's true that such a high frequency is limited by its penetration range, such modems and cells will make use of MIMO antenna technology with intelligent beamforming and beam tracking to bounce signal off walls, in order to go around obstacles.

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SOURCE : ENGADGET