Qualcomm To Soon Launch World's First 5G Modem Solution, Qualcomm Snapdragon X50

Qualcomm, the global leaders in next generation mobile technologies, announced on Monday that it will be soon releasing the first 5G modem in the world, named as Qualcomm Snapdragon X50. With this, the American mobile chip giant becomes the first company to declare a commercial 5G modem chipsets thereby, claiming its 5G leadership.

The fifth-generation modem will be launched with the aim to offer a method of communication for wireless devices at radical speeds over high-frequencies. Qualcomm intends to make this ultra-fast 5G modem service common by 2018-2019. According to NBC San Diego, the Qualcomm 5G modem will support activity in mmWave (millimeter wave) spectrum within 28GHz band. The Qualcomm Snapdragon X50 can apparently support apex download speeds on your smartphone that can go upto 5GB per second, which is, lightning speed considering the 4G download speed in the U.S. which is 9.9MB per second.

While the Qualcomm Snapdragon X50 5G modem chipset can be paired with a Snapdragon processor with a unified Gigabit LTE modem and closely communicate using dual-network, it can also be utilized for multi-mode mobile broadband (4G/5G) along with broadband services that are fixed and wireless. The manager of technical market at Qualcomm, Sheriff Hanna said that at those high speeds, things will be completely altered on what happens on a mobile phone.

The San Diego based multinational said that they will begin sending samples to their customers in the latter half of 2017, while the shipping of mobile phones with built-in modem chips will start in first half 2018, reports Forbes. Although 2018 is not so far, access to 5Gbps download speeds on your smartphone is not going to be a reality any time soon. This is because; getting started with the infrastructure for Qualcomm 5G connectivity will be a challenging task for the mobile phone network operators.

Millimeter waves don't go beyond a certain wavelength and unable to even infiltrate the walls, considering that the Qualcomm Snapdragon's 5G chipset will function on the millimeter spectrum within 28GHz band. Therefore, for 5G coverage mobile operators will have to rather install several small cell base stations than building massive towers for transmitting signals over a long distance.

However, Qualcomm states that this new offering by them will enable manufacturers to develop the next generation mobile phones and assist the mobile phone operators to analyze how to set-up 5G connectivity.