In cooperation with Samsung,
Qualcomm Technologies Inc. made an impressive showcase of both what
its latest 32-bit silicon and LTE Advanced Category 6 are capable of. At MWC
2014, a special Samsung Galaxy Note 3 phablet outfitted with
Qualcomm's supercharged Snapdragon 805 chipset and a Qualcomm Gobi
9x35 modem, achieved incredible download speeds of up to 300Mbps.
For comparison, the average American
download speeds are 21.5 Mbps for Broadband, and 10.4 Mbps for
mobile, according to Net Index. Obviously, that's not going to cut it
for comfortably streaming 4K video, which is an important feature in
Qualcomm's latest available Snapdragon 801 chipset. 4K content also
serves to explain why one would need such manic speeds in a mobile
device.
While the Snapdragon 805, which is
expected to appear in devices from May, is a miracle on its own, the
Gobi 9x35 is no small feat of Qualcomm's engineering. It's the first
commercially announced 3G/LTE multi-mode modem based on 20nm
technology, and is also backwards compatible to support all other
major cellular technologies. This includes WCDMA /MC-HSPA, CDMA
1x/EVDO Rev. B, GSM/EDGE and TD-SCDMA. The incredible download speeds
are achieved by combining two 20MHz signals to provide twice the
amount of bandwidth.
This is great and all, but knowing you
- our passionate readers, the burning question here is whether
Samsung will introduce a Snapdragon 805-equipped Galaxy Note 3 soon.
Frankly, firing up a factory to produce a single demo unit for show
purposes doesn't make sense. And if Sammy has already put in the work
to fit Qualcomm's latest silicon in its best phablet yet, it might as
well manufacture this bad boy. Who knows, the Galaxy Note 3 might
just become the first device to run on the Snapdragon 805.
However, it's likely that the renovated
phablet will remain an exclusive to South Korea's SK Telecom for some
time, if it ever becomes widely available. Such was the case with the
Galaxy S4's Snapdragon 800-based LTE Advanced version. It was
introduced in June 2013 as a South Korean device, a mere three months
after the original Galaxy S4's glitzy March 15 launch event. It later
came to a number of European countries in November 2013, and that was
pretty much it.
Still, if Samsung ever decides to push
an updated Galaxy Note 3 to the global market, we now have a pretty
good clue about which chipset could power it.
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