- This week at Qualcomm’s annual Snapdragon Tech Summit, the company revealed its 5G roadmap for 2020. These are the details.
This past week, Qualcomm hosted its annual Snapdragon Tech Summit. At the event, Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon took to the stage with several leaders in the industry from across the world to declare the year 2020 as the year that 5G goes mainstream.
“5G will open new and exciting opportunities to connect, compute, and communicate in ways we’ve yet to imagine and we are happy to be a key player driving the adoption of 5G around the world,” said Amon. “Our Snapdragon 5G mobile platforms announced today will continue to show leadership in the industry and deliver on the promise of scaling 5G in 2020.”
Qualcomm senior vice president and general manager of mobile Alex Katouzian announced the 2020 8-Series Snapdragon flagship and a 7-Series integrated 5G platform, which will lead and scale 5G and AI in 2020.
The flagship Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform — which includes the Snapdragon X55 Modem-RF System — is considered the world’s most advanced global 5G platform as it is designed to deliver unmatched connectivity and performance for the next generation of flagship devices. And the Snapdragon 765/765G brings integrated 5G connectivity, AI processing, and select Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite Gaming experiences.
Qualcomm is expecting the Snapdragon 865 and 765/765G to power the most advanced Android-based smartphones launching in 2020 regardless of whether users are on 5G or 4G coverage. Plus Qualcomm also launched the first family of mobile platform-based modules, including the Snapdragon 865 and 765 Modular Platforms. These modular platforms are products of an end-to-end strategy for empowering the industry with tools needed to scale 5G with ease.
Customers will benefit from lower development costs while also having the ability to quickly commercialize products with new industrial designs for mobile and IoT devices. And the first carriers announcing the support of the certification program for Snapdragon Modular Platforms are Verizon and Vodafone with more expected in 2020.
“Given its role to date in helping advance the global 5G ecosystem, I’m excited to see Qualcomm Technologies announce plans for mobile platform-based modules designed to further scale products across the industry,” added Verizon chief product development officer Nicola (Sangiuliano) Palmer. “The Snapdragon Tech Summit is a great venue for ecosystem partners to collaborate and for Verizon to share our vision of where 5G will make the greatest impact on society.”
Katouzian also unveiled 3D Sonic Max, which is the latest version of the company’s ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. The 3D Sonic Max platform offers a recognition area that is 17x larger than the previous generation and allows for increased security via simultaneous two-finger authentication along with increased speed and ease of use.
“5G is a focus for the entire Lenovo organization – from network infrastructure to personal devices, being the first to launch a 5G smartphone and preview a 5G PC,” explained Motorola president Sergio Buniac. “As the mobile arm, Motorola will continue leading the 5G era with our expanded lineup of 5G solutions in 2020 — driven by the high-performing Snapdragon 765 and 865 Mobile Platforms, re-invigorating our place in the premium flagship space.”
Even though Qualcomm and Apple were in a heated legal battle earlier this year, the two companies are now focused on building a 5G iPhone. At the Tech Summit, Amon said that Qualcomm’s relationship with Apple is now “priority number one.” And PCMag reported that Amon said that Qualcomm is working closely with Apple to launch “their phone as fast as we can.” Apple is reportedly planning to launch a 5G iPhone in 2020.
“We have a multi-year agreement with Apple. It’s not one, it’s not two, it’s multi-year for our Snapdragon modem. We’re setting no expectations on the front end, especially because we engaged it very late,” noted Amon. “We re-engaged probably later than both of us would like, and I think we’ve been working together to try to get as much as possible done, and take as much possible advantage of what they’ve done before so that we can actually launch a phone on schedule with 5G.”
But Amon pointed out that Qualcomm is happy with the progress that has been made. By offering iPhones with 5G connectivity, Apple is expecting 2020 to be a big year for its smartphone sales.
