ANDROID lovers can look forward to a mega Wi-Fi connectivity upgrade and faster 5G on their next smartphone.
Qualcomm – the company behind new Manchester United shirt sponsor Snapdragon – has announced a series of big tech boosts expected to start appearing in devices later this year.
The US firm’s high performance kit is already widely used by the likes of Samsung, OnePlus and Xiaomi.
Top of the agenda is an improvement to enable the next generation of 5G, meaning data connections are set to become zippier.
A new system known as X80 5G Modem-RF uses AI to improve 5G speeds.
But that’s not all as Qualcomm claims it’ll ease your phone from other common problems, such as quality of service and coverage.
And it can even help your phone’s battery last longer.
The modem also has satellite communications support, so future phones may receive the ability to keep texts going when you have no signal.
Alongside all this, the tech giant has been busy using AI to take Wi-Fi to the next level.
Qualcomm FastConnect 7900 is set to introduce better compatibility with the latest generation of Wi-Fi.
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Wi-Fi 7 isn’t widely available from routers just yet – we only recently got a sneak peak of EE’s new Wi-Fi 7 supported router.
Both the router providing Wi-Fi and the devices you’re using need Wi-Fi 7 kit inside them for users to fully benefit from the speed boost on offer.
The tech also integrates Bluetooth Channel Sounding into a single chip taking less space inside – so effectively your next Android smartphone might be lighter and thinner, as well as cutting power consumption.
Qualcomm’s main goal with FastConnect 7900 is to make life easier by using proximity technologies.
This will allow any devices with the chip inside to detect one and other – for example, your laptop may unlock automatically when your phone is near and then it will automatically lock when your phone moves away with you.
Eventually it could be adapted into all sorts of everyday things, such as your car, to find lost headphones and even navigating a building.
When can we expect 6G?
There is already talk about when 5G’s successor, 6G, will launch.
5G only landed in the UK in 2019 and it’s still not available everywhere.
And separately, 3G has just started being switched off in the UK this year.
John Smee, SVP Engineering at Qualcomm, explains that 6G is still a way off yet but research is very much underway.
“So 5G itself started in 2019/2020, so it’s going to take us through to 2030,” he told The Sun.
“The reason these Gs happen every ten years or so is there’s a huge amount of cumulative research that gets embedded and incorporated into that next generation.”
For now, we don’t know exactly what to expect from 6G except it’ll undoubtedly be faster for much bigger data-hungry products like cars, as well as performing a lot smoother.
Cellular networks are evolutionary – you don’t really rip out 4G to put in 5G, instead kit is gradually upgraded.
At the moment, 5G is being boosted to something called 5G Advanced, which has far greater capacity and coverage.
