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Cellphones Communications Network Hardware Technology

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 765 Chip Could Usher In the First Affordable 5G Phones (theverge.com) 39

In addition to the flagship Snapdragon 865 processor, Qualcomm announced details about its other new chip, the midrange Snapdragon 765. "The 765 might actually be the more interesting of the two, thanks to its integrated 5G modem and its likely future of powering cheaper, midrange devices," reports The Verge. From the report: Right now, there's not a lot of 5G devices out there, and the ones that are around tend to be very expensive. The upcoming 865 might help with that. By default, it'll only work with the X55 5G modem, meaning every Android flagship with a Snapdragon 865 (i.e., nearly all of them) will, in theory, be a 5G phone next year. But even cheaper Android phones with Qualcomm's top processor tend to cost upwards of $750. 700-series chips, on the other hand, are found in far cheaper phones, like HMD's Nokia phones, which hit much lower prices.

It's a much lower barrier to entry for 5G than anything currently available, and it could be a big part of making the next-generation network accessible to more customers, not just those who are willing to shell out for the top phones. In fact, it's possible that the Snapdragon 765 will enable better 5G experiences than phones with the 865. That's because, unlike the Snapdragon 865, the 765 has a less powerful X52 modem. It's capable of lower speeds (maxing out at 3.7 Gbps, instead of the 7 Gbps the X55 is theoretically capable of). But it has a big advantage: that 5G modem is integrated directly in the 765 chipset, meaning it should offer improved power efficiency (and, therefore, battery life) than the X55, which is its own separate chip. It'll also support a wider range of 5G standards than the current X50 modem, with Qualcomm promising support for mmWave and sub-6GHz, standalone and non-standalone 5G, and TDD and FDD with Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) network types.
Both the Snapdragon 765 and 765G, which features a new Qualcomm Adreno 620 GPU, are expected to come to market in the first quarter of 2020.
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Qualcomm's Snapdragon 765 Chip Could Usher In the First Affordable 5G Phones

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  • Or... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xlsior ( 524145 ) on Thursday December 05, 2019 @02:21AM (#59486758)
    Alternatively, stick with 4G and get much better battery life and a phone that doesn't overheat.
    • Alternatively, there's all the affordable 5G phones built with Chinese chips, that would be US chips if it hadn't been for the trade embargo and accompanying threats.
  • Who cares (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kot-begemot-uk ( 6104030 ) on Thursday December 05, 2019 @02:42AM (#59486782) Homepage
    Who cares - there is very little network and there will be very little network.

    5G has a very interesting "side" property - it you can listen to reflected signals you can use it as a radar illuminator which operates in frequencies that bust stealth (same as the Russian S400 Radar): https://www.fagain.co.uk/node/... [fagain.co.uk]

    While in theory you can do that with any mobile from refarmed TV frequency 4G onwards, only 5G makes it practical because of MIMO, synchronization and simplified Layer 1/Layer 2.

    Because of that the amount of coverage will continue to be abysmal for a very long time. The military will continue to drag their feet in a way we saw with 802.1a. In fact, it will be worse - we have every single propaganda and political gun deployed sprouting bullshit about 5G security to eke a few more years out of Stealth so that more idiots can be duped to buy useless crapware like the F35: https://www.fagain.co.uk/node/... [fagain.co.uk]

    • Re:Who cares (Score:4, Insightful)

      by thesupraman ( 179040 ) on Thursday December 05, 2019 @03:09AM (#59486826)

      The who cares is deeper than than.

      5G is almost PURE marketing hype - its only function is in high density user areas (big sports events, etc..) where a higher total aggregate bandwidth is required, and in such p[laces it fixes a problem the providers have more than anything else.

      5G is also the next 'how many cameras does your phone have' sales bulletpoint, and will have very few other benefits for users.

      There are exactly zero applications for GBit connectivity on a single phone in the near future, and even if there was a use, the charges would be astronomical.

      • The devices cant process data at full 4g speeds anyways so it really is silly. The damage to the companies comes from them advertising it as faster when its more like same speeds but to with more devices cheaper(in the long run).

      • Thus this post [slashdot.org]:

        5G? Well, it's one higher, isn't it? It's not 4G. You see, most blokes, you know, will be using 4G. You're on 4G here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on 4G on your phone. Where can you go from there? Where? What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Put it up to 5G. Exactly. One higher. These go to 5G.

      • That last bit is the most crucial one. What good is a gbit connection if the payment plan means that with that gibt connection I could run through the monthly allotted transfer limit in minutes?

        That's like owning a Ferrari but having to do with a gallon of gas a month. Sure, you can drive it really fast... for about 2 seconds.

      • The how many cameras actually makes sense though, because all the cameras are fixed focal lengths. Even a cheap point and shoot can do 12x optical zoom, so multiple cameras is really the only way you can get a usable shot out of a phone unless you are just taking a standard portrait or landscape.

      • Well you may or may not be interested in the the faster max connection speed that 5G can deliver in cities but there are other aspects of 5G that are important. Personally I think a 10 times performance increase, shown i real life test today, are pretty cool. The two main other advantages are lower latency and the ability to handle many more devices. Latency can drop from 20ms to 4ms or just 1ms for ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC). Latency is important for IoT (internet of things). And 5G
      • by cusco ( 717999 )

        The point to 5G isn't actually consumer telephones, it's the burgeoning number of IoT devices that are going to swamp 4G networks if carriers don't do something first. There are already more of them on the planet than there are people, and by the end of next year there will be an estimated 20 billion. All of them need communications to be useful (and I'm not talking about Internet-connected refrigerators, but soil moisture monitors, smart streetlights, sewer flow meters, drone management systems and the l

    • So ... countries like Iran will gladly and quickly adapt 5G, I guess?

      For the sake of providing their people with modern communication infrastructure, of course.

      • by cusco ( 717999 )

        Actually Africa is likely to 'leapfrog' the current technology and go directly from 2G and 3G networks to 5G running on Chinese hardware. Africa is doing some surprising things, since they don't have the installed infrastructure providing inertia. For example, they were the first region to embrace smartphone banking, most of a decade before the US and EU, solar microgrids are proliferating everywhere, and the world's first commercial drone delivery service started in Rwanda. The vast majority of Internet

    • Informative. They say any well tuned radar will a competent operator will see stealth planes. Up to 2.4ghz because that's when rain interferes. But when it is not raining everyone has VHF to 6Ghz scanning, and maybe a few cheap modified and modulated microwave ovens begging for anti-radiation missiles. So what the US is saying is if a few special forces pack a ZTE or Huawei mobile, they may be fired upon by their own. One can see the Russians buying up 1000's of 5G's to act as decoys around their S400 sites
    • That....makes no sense. You are claiming that 5G will be used to detect stealth aircraft and the US military will...stop...deployment...through...magic? Meanwhile T-Mobile rolls out their 5G nationwide in the US tomorrow.

    • The main advantage in 5G is greater telemetry capability. Why should we want to pay more for a phone that mostly does the same thing as our old phone but tracks us to a greater degree and sends a higher volume of telemetry about us to the Big Data servers?

  • the sooner everything is IP based and not falling back to 3G voice the better but that means the networks have to support 5G Stand Alone (SA) it means handoff will be smoother and importantly MORE BATTERY LIFE since its not registering all over the place... you get an IP address and thats what gets contacted when you have a call...

     

    • And frankly, IMHO, technically, 3G already does that, we just called it 4G when it finally did.

    • Except that in real life telephone companies have occasional "strange" problems with VOLTE.

      Like on one phone after activating it I could not receive phone calls from one other carrier, but could fine from everyone else.

      I have also heard of others with strange problems.

  • You always have to have somebody with a base station follow you around, for it to offer any advantage over 4G.
    Might as well use a cable.

  • Do you actually have good 4G coverage? If not (i.e. if you belong to about 90% of the people), why do you think 5G would be any better?

    Could we try to learn to walk before we get promised to sprint? I kinda get reminded of the empty promises of the Communist era where they promised us to "leapfrog" the capitalists by overtaking them without first having to catch up to them. Bull. Shit.

  • by NotTheSame ( 6161704 ) on Thursday December 05, 2019 @06:32AM (#59487070)

    "The Onion" has the whole 5G situation nicely covered:

    https://www.theonion.com/fuck-... [theonion.com]

    Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of shaving in this country. The Gillette Mach3 was the razor to own. Then the other guy came out with a three-blade razor. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called the Mach3Turbo. That's three blades and an aloe strip. For moisture. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happened—the bastards went to four blades. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling three blades and a strip. Moisture or no, suddenly we're the chumps. Well, fuck it. We're going to five blades.

  • by pablo_max ( 626328 ) on Thursday December 05, 2019 @07:56AM (#59487202)

    Given that cellular providers will continue with ever more aggressive data caps, it is unlikely that consumers will see any advantage to 5G over the current UMTS/LTE network infrastructure already deployed.
    Given that my house is near to one of the new deployed 5G towers, I had considered moving to the new "unlimited 5G" home internet service given that the 500MB/s price is currently the same as what I pay for 120MB/s and fiber will never be deployed in my area.
    Looking more closely at unlimited, what they mean is 500GB.
    Also, they reserve the right to downgrade netflix to 480P as well as other streaming services.
    As we only have netflix and Amazon prime, coupled with online gaming, reaching 500GB a month with 4 heavy users will be easy.

    So, even though the network capacity is far higher than with LTE and UMTS, the carriers will continue with their dirty tricks in order to catch every cent.
    We can only hope that someday, someone invents a WWW where there is no need for carriers and each user acts a wireless node. I guess until then, we will never be able to really take advantage of a high speed, always and everything connected world.

  • It's capable of lower speeds

    That rather implies that it can do something the other can't. Not that it has a lower max speed, but that it has a lower minimum speed.

    That's the kind of doublespeak unscrupulous marketers use - why is it here?

  • So when are we going to get affordable 4G phones. The prices are approaching the ridiculous.
    • Never. Once everything is 5G they will stop selling "legacy technology".
    • Nokia phones by HMD oy. Nokia 2.2 has a removable battery, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and an FM radio. Android, too, with two years of Android letter updates, and three years of security updates and. Not as much as Apple with their five years of support, or Nokia of the olde with its eight years of support, but still. Also, plenty of camera megapixels, but no OIS.
  • by NotTheSame ( 6161704 ) on Thursday December 05, 2019 @09:46AM (#59487582)

    Why not just change it to say 5G?

    99% of people would be none the wiser.

    • Hell why stop at 5G when you can probably get an extra $20 to "illegally modify" someone's phone to get 6G? Of course the carriers and the government don't want anyone to have it yet, so best keep quite about this little upgrade. May as well throw in a free RAM download for them as well.
    • 5G is not just about the speed of your phone. It is also about latency, density (number of devices per km^2) and reliability, the stuff that is needed for the Internet of Things (IoT), self-driving cars etc. The real advantages of 5G comes from its integration into the infrastructure of society, and that will take time.
  • Oh gee so you can, what, watch 4K movies on your tiny little screen and get massive eyestrain headaches along with your massive overage bill as it sucks up all of your tiny yet massively overpriced dataplan from your price-gouging wireless company? That's the end-game here, after all: divest as much of your money from you as possible, while giving you something pretty much useless. Here's an idea for you: how about a phone is just a phone, and you keep your head up and looking at everything but that tiny li

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