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posted by martyb on Thursday January 23 2020, @08:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the when-good-enough-is-good-enough dept.

Companies like Xiaomi plan to use Qualcomm's new 4G Snapdragon processors.

Tech companies can't stop talking about 5G, but chip giant Qualcomm has still got plenty in store for 4G: three new LTE processors for midrange and lower-end phones.

The company late Monday unveiled its Snapdragon 720G, 662 and 460 processors to give less expensive phones faster 4G connectivity. The new chips also have Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, as well tech to improve a phone's artificial intelligence and photography capabilities. 

Xiaomi is one company that plans to use the Snapdragon 720G, which is geared for gaming phones. The processor is similar to Qualcomm's 760G, which gives gaming phones integrated 5G connectivity. Other handset makers in India, like Realme, also have said they'll use Qualcomm's new 4G processors this year. 

The company said devices using the Snapdragon 720G will hit the market this quarter, while phones based on the Snapdragon 662 and 460 will be available by the end of 2020. 

[...] The company's Snapdragon 720G provides smooth HDR game play and realistic graphics. It also lets users shoot 4G video or 192-megapixel photos and has Qualcomm's newest, fifth-generation AI engine that's also found in its higher-end processors. The technology "will enable a host of new AI experiences for gaming, photography, voice assistants and virtually always-on contextual awareness," the company said.

The Snapdragon 720G also comes with an integrated X15 LTE modem that's capable of download speeds of up to 800 Mbps. 

The Snapdragon 662 supports triple camera configurations, a first for the company's 6-series chips. It will also have Qualcomm's third-generation AI engine to let phone makers add things like avatars, night photography and face and voice authentication to cheaper phones. The processor comes integrated with the new X11 LTE modem that can download data at up to 390 Mbps. 

And the Snapdragon 460, aimed at cheap phones, gets a big boost in performance and connectivity speeds. The new CPU is 70% faster than the chip's predecessor, the Snapdragon 450, while the GPU is 60% faster. Overall the system's performance is double that of the older chip. Like the Snapdragon 662, the Snapdragon 460 also includes the third-generation AI engine and an integrated X11 modem. 


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Chocolate on Thursday January 23 2020, @08:41AM (9 children)

    by Chocolate (8044) on Thursday January 23 2020, @08:41AM (#947304) Journal

    From what i can tell the coverage is crap and the speed boost for cost just isn't worth it. I can watch movies on my phone now. Do we need 5G?

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  • (Score: 2) by petecox on Thursday January 23 2020, @09:01AM (2 children)

    by petecox (3228) on Thursday January 23 2020, @09:01AM (#947307)
    Higher speeds hopefully means larger monthly data.

    390, let alone 800mbps is substantially faster than Australia's NBN fraudband but I'd use up my current monthly mobile data limit within hours.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 23 2020, @10:15AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 23 2020, @10:15AM (#947322) Journal

      390, let alone 800mbps is substantially faster than Australia's NBN

      Chill, mate, with the speed of the cell towers equipment and the coverage outside the shopping malls, you won't be able to hit those speeds.

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    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @09:28AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @09:28AM (#948420)

      There are jokes about how you can blow your quota in an hour. My phone plan now has 48GB data per year for about $20 per month. Its getting better.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 23 2020, @09:05AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 23 2020, @09:05AM (#947308)
  • (Score: 4, Touché) by Arik on Thursday January 23 2020, @09:23AM (1 child)

    by Arik (4543) on Thursday January 23 2020, @09:23AM (#947311) Journal
    "Do we need 5G?"

    How else will we have enough bandwidth for the Chinese spyware to operate properly?
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  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday January 23 2020, @04:28PM (2 children)

    by RS3 (6367) on Thursday January 23 2020, @04:28PM (#947483)

    In case anyone reading this doesn't know, in general the higher the carrier frequency (RF / radio frequency), the higher the potential data rate, but the more easily your signal will drop off due to obstructions and atmospheric damping.

    5G is a much expanded spec. There are many many bands (carrier frequencies), some of which have lower carrier frequencies, so they will go significantly farther than 3G or 4G, but of course at reduced data speeds. Some of the highest 5G frequencies have amazing data rates, but can be dampened by glass.

    The higher the frequency, the smaller the antenna can be, so the idea is to have antennas everywhere in cities, and use the lower frequencies for better long distance coverage out in suburban and rural areas.

    • (Score: 2) by Chocolate on Friday January 24 2020, @07:18AM (1 child)

      by Chocolate (8044) on Friday January 24 2020, @07:18AM (#947869) Journal

      https://www.techspot.com/community/topics/long-term-prediction-5g-will-be-a-failure.256708/ [techspot.com]

      With a range of 100m to 200m they are going to need a lot of hardware.

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      • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday January 24 2020, @02:58PM

        by RS3 (6367) on Friday January 24 2020, @02:58PM (#947949)

        Sorry, that post you linked is based on misinformation. It's also called "spin" where a person with an opinion picks and chooses "facts" to support only their narrow point of view. It's one of the many logical fallacies, and I'm not expert on identifying logical fallacies- there are too many https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies [wikipedia.org] but some posters here on SN are expert and may weigh in.

        5G is a very broad spec, as I already wrote. If you glance at this list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR_frequency_bands [wikipedia.org], you'll see that right now the spec ranges from a low band of 600 MHz which is lower than your current phone and will therefore go much farther, to high bands of up to 40 GHz, and there is talk/work/proposal to go to 70 - 80 GHz.

        Yes, more cell sites will be needed for the 40 GHz stuff, but they will be much smaller, largely due to the fact that the higher the frequency, the smaller the antenna. And, to minimize losses, the smaller and more tightly packed the electronics need to be. So in cities, there will be lots of higher frequency cell sites.

        But do not get caught up in thinking there must necessarily be more sites- your phone automatically switches to the bands it can find.

        The real catch is: just saying you have a 4G or 5G phone means very little. I've been comparing phone specs and the actual bands that phones can do varies wildly from phone to phone.