Samsung’s next flagship may be capable of downloading an HD movie in 10 seconds.
Samsung says its new Cat.18 LTE modem, expected to debut in its next flagship, will feature download speeds of up to 1.2Gbps — 20 percent faster than the Cat.16 modem in the Galaxy S8.
The manufacturer says the speed boost is due to its support of six carrier aggregation (6CA), an achievement that it worked closely on with Japanese telecommunication measuring instrument provider Anritsu.
Carrier aggregation is a technique that allows carriers to stitch together multiple blocks of wireless spectrum to provide subscribers with faster data transfer rates and stronger network performance. It’s an LTE-Advanced technology that will provide one of the bridges into the multi-gigabit 5G speeds of the future.
But while the device may support 6CA, networks are still catching up with the 5CA support in its Exynos 9 Series (8895) SoC in the Galaxy S8.
While the device may support 6CA, networks are still catching up with the 5CA support in its Exynos 9 Series (8895) SoC in the Galaxy S8.
Bell and Telus just recently rolled out 4CA, promising theoretical speeds of up to 750Mbps and real-world speeds of between 22 and 174Mbps, so it’s unlikely that we’ll see real-world speeds above 1Gbps anytime in the near future.
Still, its good to know that Samsung’s forthcoming flagship handset will be one of the speediest devices around from a connectivity standpoint.
In addition to 6CA, the chip supports 4×4 MIMO (Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output), which multiplies antennas for stronger signal, and higher-order 256 QAM (Quadrature amplitude modulation), a more efficient encoding system.
It also uses enhanced Licensed-Assisted Access (eLAA) that can aggregate licensed and unlicensed spectrum, thus providing even more bandwidth.
Samsung says its new Cat.18 6CA-supported LTE modem technology is “expected to be in mass production by the end of this year,” meaning it won’t hit the upcoming Note device, but will likely arrive in the Galaxy S9.
However, the 1.2Gbps S9 might not come to North America. In recent years, Samsung has gone with Qualcomm chips for any Galaxy S- and Note models it ships to North America.
Source: Samsung
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