Qualcomm shows the first details of the Snapdragon 855 chipset and publishes a list of manufacturers who will use the chip. The Snapdragon 855 will be available from next year and includes standard 5G connectivity.
At the Snapdragon Tech Summit in Hawaii, Qualcomm showed the first details about the brand new Snapdragon 855. The big announcement will follow later, but today the chip manufacturer mainly focused on 5G connectivity.
According to Qualcomm, 2019 will be an important year for 5G. The first smartphones with the new 5G chipset will be available at the beginning of 2019. Throughout 2019, networks across North America, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia and China will be prepared for 5G. In Europe, Deutsche Telekom, EE, Swisscom and Vodafone were featured in the presentation.
Deutsche Telekom is ready for a broad roll-out of 5G by 2020, while EE plans to provide 5G to 16 cities in the United Kingdom by 2019. Swisscom aims to provide 5G connectivity to more than 60 cities by the end of 2019. Vodafone aims for the same number of cities but wants them operational by mid-2019. By 2020, the provider wants to expand to more than 1,000 cities.
5G spectrum
In total there are 20 different operators that will roll out 5G in 2019. In Europe, the main focus is on the sub-6 GHz spectrum for 5G, with a systematic roll-out of mmWave in the second half of 2019. The latter technique delivers a much higher speed, but also requires many more antennas.
The compatible 5G phones (with Snapdragon 855) come from 18 confirmed manufacturers including Asus, HMD Global (Nokia), HTC and LG.
Over the past year, 5G has gained momentum. In mid-November, Huawei tested another 5G site in London and Orange Belgium and Nokia tested concrete 5G applications in Liège at the beginning of September. Qualcomm’s first 5G antennas for mobile devices have been ready since mid-July. At the end of October, Qualcomm achieved a 25% reduction in order to make it easier to integrate the antennas into smartphones.
Initial details
Qualcomm emphasizes that the Snapdragon 855 is the world’s first ever commercial mobile platform supporting multi-gigabit 5G. The official announcement of the Snapdragon 855 will follow later, but Qualcomm has already released some details. It gets a fourth generation multi-core AI engine that performs up to three times better than the Snapdragon 845.
The chipset will also receive the world’s first computer vision ISP core for better photo and video processing. Finally, the chip supports a new 3D sonic sensor that can detect a fingerprint under the screen faster and more accurately.
Related: Qualcomm reduces 5G antennas by 25% for 2019 launch
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.
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