Items tagged with 5G
In 2020, TCL ventured beyond its successful TV business by launching three TCL-branded phones in the US -- the $450 TCL 10 Pro and $250 10L (which we both reviewed), followed by the $400 TCL 10 5G UW. The company is no stranger to mobile, having previously sold budget handsets under the Alcatel brand. But last year’s TCL 10-series was aimed squarely at Moto’s US mid-range lineup, and was quite competitive. Then, at CES 2021, TCL announced the 20-series, which first landed in other regions, but is now available in the US with three phones -- the $500 TCL 20 Pro 5G, $250 20S, and $190 20SE. A lot has changed this past year. LG’s left the mobile space, and both Samsung and OnePlus...
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The U.S. wireless industry is swiftly moving to 5G technology via sub-6GHz bands and [less prevalently with] mmWave. With AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile doing their best to court customers with enticing promotions, the former is upping the stakes via a partnership with Google. AT&T announced today that its 5G wireless and home fiber customers will now be given a six-month subscription to Google's Stadia Pro game streaming service. AT&T is, of course, limiting the Stadia Pro offer to 5G and fiber customers because it feels that they offer the best possible performance to enjoy gaming streaming either at home or on the go with a mobile device. According to the company, after the first...
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Earlier this morning, we brought you news about two new additions to Intel's Tiger Lake-U family: the flagship Core i7-1195G7 and the Core i5-1155G7. But that isn't the only big news happening in the laptop world from Intel. The company also announced the latest developments in its partnership with MediaTek and Fibocom to deliver 5G modems for laptops. It is called the Intel 5G Solution 5000 and is available in a standardized M.2 form-factor for easy deployment. However, PC OEMs must still provide the necessary antennas to enable cellular reception with the 5G modem. MediaTek did a lot of the heavy lifting with this new connectivity option, as the Intel 5G Solution 5000 is largely based on its...
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Qualcomm has the lion's share of the market with its Snapdragon processors when it comes to Android smartphones. From its low-end 400- and 600-Series SoCs to the high-end 800-Series, Qualcomm has the smartphone market cornered. However, MediaTek is looking to challenge Qualcomm head-on with the Dimensity 900. The Dimensity 900 is a 6nm SoC aimed at the premium mid-range smartphone sector. In that sense, the Dimensity 900 seems poised to challenge the likes of the newly introduced Snapdragon 780G. The SoC is an 8-core design, with dual Cortex-A78 performance cores clocked at 2.4GHz and six Cortex-A55 efficiency cores clocked at 2GHz. For comparison, the Snapdragon 780G uses four 2.4GHz Cortex-A78...
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While Qualcomm and Apple buried the [legal] hatchet in 2019 concerning lawsuits regarding licensing and copyright infringement over 4G LTE modems, the latter is still far along with the development of its own next-generation hardware. In years past, Apple used a mixture of Intel and Qualcomm modems (its current iPhones and iPads exclusively use Qualcomm hardware). But we all know that Apple is quickly bringing major component design in-house, and the modem is a pricey piece of the smartphone puzzle. According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple's first in-house 5G modems will debut in 2023 iPhones. That means that Qualcomm will have just two more years of exclusivity before Apple charts its...
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If you have been lusting after LG's delightfully unique Wing smartphone with 5G connectivity, now is the opportune time to pounce. It launched at $999 just a few months, falling squarely into premium pricing territory, and for some, making it cost prohibitive. But with LG exiting the smartphone business (don't let that scare you away, more on this in a moment), you can grab the Wing at a deep discount right now. As in, the LG Wing is selling for $599.99 at T-Mobile. That is a huge $400 savings over the phone's list price, which is a pretty amazing deal when you factor in the hardware, features, and of course the swiveling screen that transforms the smartphone into a multi-display, T-shaped handset...
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When T-Mobile acquired Sprint, it made big promises regarding blanketing the United States with 5G connectivity. T-Mobile has made good on those promises with a rapid rollout of low- and mid-band 5G spectrum in addition to mmWave spectrum where possible. Today, the company has announced a couple of initiatives to bring 5G to even more people. According to the company, the quick spread of 5G networks across the United States and the billions of dollars being invested is pointless if Americans can't access those [potentially] higher speeds. According to T-Mobile, 92 percent of Americans don't even have a 5G-capable smartphone, so it is ramping up efforts to make such devices available to everyone....
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The OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro were first announced just over a week ago, and we followed up with our review of both smartphones. Today, however, marks the flagship Snapdragon 888 devices' official launch, and here's where you can purchase them in both unlocked and carrier-locked form. You can get the base OnePlus 9 unlocked direct from OnePlus, or you can choose to go with Amazon or Best Buy. Amazon only offers the OnePlus 9 in Winter Mist, while both OnePlus and Best Buy offer Winter Mist and Astral Black. The price at each store is $729.99, which is value-priced for a Snapdragon 888-powered flagship smartphone. OnePlus 9 $729.99 8GB RAM 128GB Unlocked @ Amazon OnePlus 9 $729.99 8GB RAM 128GB...
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AT&T today announced some big news for customers on its unlimited plans. The wireless industry is swiftly moving to 5G wireless technology and is working to blanket the United States with high-speed coverage (some carriers are having better luck than others with that initiative). AT&T says that it is now extending 5G access to all its customers that are on legacy unlimited data plans. According to the company, access to its 5G and 5G+ networks will now be available at no additional cost to these customers. AT&T's announcement is both welcome and, at the same time, quite comical considering how carriers have obfuscated the meaning of "unlimited" data when it relates...
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The true promise of 5G connectivity has yet to be realized, for a few reasons. For one, it is simply not as widely available as 4G LTE. Secondly, not all cellular devices support 5G. And then there is the issue of speed. In a lot of places, 5G connectivity can actually be slower than 4G. That is set to change with Verizon spending big money on mid-band spectrum known as C-band, but there's a very big catch for consumers. Only customers who subscribe to a premium unlimited plan will have access to the desirable C-band spectrum, when Verizon flips the switch. Customers on lower tier plans will be stuck with slower 5G, which has been a disappointment so far. We wrote about this last November when...
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Virgin Media is currently trialing fiber internet that is insanely fast and could eventually deploy to residential customers. In the South East England town of Reading, Berkshire, Virgin Media conducted performance tests using prototype Infinera X.R. Optics technology. Using this new tech within its existing infrastructure, the telecommunications company was able to achieve data transfer rates of 400Gbps with a single fiber. "In the trial, the traditional network transceivers were replaced with cutting-edge technology which split a single fibre optic cable into many connections, all taking a share of the huge capacity," said Virgin Media when announcing its breakthrough. "This means a single...
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Microsoft launched its flagship Surface Duo smartphone last year, and it garnered a lot of attention due to its dual folding screens. However, the novelty of the dual screens was offset by its older [at the time] Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC, a maximum of 6GB RAM, and 4G LTE connectivity when most Android smartphones came standard with 5G. It also didn't help that the Surface Duo started at $1,399 when it debuted. The inevitable Surface Duo 2 is on the way, and a couple of job listings on Microsoft's careers website give us some insight into what to expect for the smartphone. A job listing for "SW/FW Engineer II" says that the "Microsoft Devices Software team is on a journey to create...
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We're still early in the lifecycle of 5G wireless technology, but chipmakers are quickly iterating, delivering more potent modems with each new generation. Qualcomm kicked off its flagship 5G modem efforts with the Snapdragon X50, its second-generation Snapdragon X55 is currently found inside the iPhone 12 family, and the new Snapdragon 888 SoC has an integrated third-generation Snapdragon X60. Now, Qualcomm is ready to unleash its fourth-generation Snapdragon X65. The Snapdragon X65 represents a complete modem-to-antenna solution that supports the impending 3GPP Release 16 specification. Qualcomm also explains that its new solution is software updatable, which will allow it to take advantage...
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As technology takes over the automotive space for more intelligent driving experiences, there are increasingly more powerful processing platforms to control various powertrain, infotainment, and safety subsystems. Such is the case with Qualcomm's new 4th generation Snapdragon Automotive Cockpit Platform. This new connected compute platform combines multiple sensors with computer vision, artificial intelligence, in a high-performance SoC. Qualcomm apparently is going all out, as the new Snapdragon Automotive Compute Platform is based on the 5nm process node, which is shared with the company's recently introduced Snapdragon 888 5G Mobile Platform. The platform will tie together various functions...
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Verizon is expanding access to its greater 5G network to its customers that prefer prepaid accounts. Verizon previously provided access to both its 5G Nationwide (sub-6GHz) and 5G Ultra-Wideband (mmWave) to its postpaid customers, however, only the former was available to prepaid accounts. With this week's announcement, prepaid accounts will also gain access to the 5G Ultra-Wideband network, but it's not cheap. The new 5G unlimited data prepaid plan costs $75 per month, or $10/month more than what Verizon charges for the standard unlimited plan. That extra $10/month gets you access to month the fastest 5G speeds available in the United States with downlink speeds in excess of 1Gbps. However,...
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Last year, 5G availability and performance was disappointing, and realistically not much has changed on that front. Apple touted "5G just got real" when the iPhone 12 family launched, but 5G tended not to be much better than 4G, if at all. Either way, the technology is still improving, and has more widely rolled out, so improvements are to be expected nationwide. Ookla has released its Q4 findings for mobile networks, and we get to see how the competitors stack up. First and foremost, AT&T got to take the crown for both "Fastest Provider" and "5G Performance" based on weighted scores correlated to download and upload speeds. For the overall fastest provider, AT&T had a Speed Score of...
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In the Android smartphone world, Qualcomm has an entire army of SoCs blanketing the entry-level, mid-range, premium, and flagship markets. The company just yesterday tried filling any perceivable gap with the "flagship" Snapdragon 870 SoC. But rivals like MediaTek aren't mere pushovers in the smartphone segment, as the company has announced two new flagship SoCs for its OEM partners. At the very top of the stack is the Dimensity 1200, which will take the place of MediaTek's current flagship Dimensity 1000+ SoC. The chip is built on a 6nm process node, which slots in neatly between the mature 7nm and bleeding edge 5nm process nodes. The Dimensity 1200 features a CPU with four Arm Cortex-A78...
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Qualcomm has given birth to a new Snapdragon SKU this morning. Meet the Snapdragon 870 5G, essentially a juiced up version of the Snapdragon 865 Plus, which will find its way into select premium Android smartphones. The newer SKU offers the same features and hardware as its sibling, but offers a higher top CPU clockspeed. Like the Snapdragon 865 Plus, the newly unveiled Snapdragon 870 5G Mobile Platform (full name) is comprised of Qualcomm's Kryo 585 CPU, paired with an Adreno 650 GPU and Snapdragon X55 5G modem-RF system. However, OEMs will be able to squeeze a bit of extra performance out of the newer part—the performance cores in the CPU can hit 3.2GHz, up from 3.1GHz. Granted, a 100MHz...
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Qualcomm, a behemoth in the mobile chip market (namely due to its Snapdragon silicon), announced on Wednesday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire NUVIA for about $1.4 billion, before factoring in working capital and other adjustments. The purchase, if it clears regulatory hurdles, provides an inroad for Qualcomm to make another spirited run at the server market (if it chooses to go that route). But that's not all. In announcing the deal, Qualcomm kept any plans in the server space close to the vest, and instead focused on what this transaction means for its efforts in 5G communications and mobile SoCs in the consumer space. "5G, the convergence of computing and mobile architectures,...
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Over the past year, Qualcomm has done much to expand its footprint in the 5G realm with a whole slate of new Snapdragon chipsets. In 2020, the first smartphones with the Snapdragon 865, 765, 750G, and 690 Mobile Platforms were launched. Starting later this month, we'll see the first smartphones with Qualcomm's new flagship Snapdragon 888 5G Mobile Platform. But Qualcomm is also looking to provide a little bit of 5G goodness as the bottom of its stack with the introduction of the Snapdragon 480 5G Mobile Platform. As you might expect, Qualcomm is billing the Snapdragon 480 as its most advanced 4-Series SoC to-date, and it is built on an 8nm process node. Running the show is a Kryo 460 CPU that...
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We reported last month that Verizon's nationwide 5G network isn't all it's cracked up to be. While it’s true that Verizon's mmWave 5G network (which it dubs UWB 5G) is among the fastest around offering speeds that can approach 1Gbps in some instances, it has limited range, has trouble penetrating buildings, and is available in relatively few locations. The company's nationwide 5G network -- which uses low- and mid-band spectrum -- is what most customers will be accessing daily, and it leaves much to be desired. New testing from PC Magazine confirms the previous assessment of Verizon's nationwide 5G network, and its test results shows that customers should probably go...
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In what will come as an absolute shock to no one, Apple has confirmed that it is working on its own homegrown 5G modems that will be featured in next-generation mobile devices. Currently, Apple only includes cellular connectivity in its iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch product families. But there's a distinct possibility that as it looks to bring more chip development in-house, cellular connectivity could spread to additional products. In a recent town hall meeting with Apple employees, Johny Srouji, who serves as Apple's SVP of Hardware Technologies, proclaimed: This year, we kicked off the development of our first internal cellular modem which will enable another key strategic transition....
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