Snapdragon 805 and Gobi 9×35 modem
Qualcomm made a curious announcement today, saying that Samsung’s Galaxy S5 LTE-A is powered by its chipset.
We already knew Qualcomm silicon was in the S5, but now the company is saying that its Snapdragon 805 is backed by the Gobi 9×35 modem, which is an LTE Advanced Category 6 modem. The Gobi 9×35 is the first commercially available 20nm modem and it is also the first LTE Cat 6 modem to hit the market.
“The modem is backwards compatible with major cellular technologies including WCDMA /MC-HSPA, CDMA 1x/EVDO Rev. B, GSM/EDGE and TD-SCDMA. The solution also features the WTR3925 transceiver, the mobile industry’s first commercial 28nm RF chip, which supports the major 3GPP-approved radio frequency bands and carrier aggregation combinations on a single chip,” the company said in a press release. “The LTE Cat 6 device is designed to provide consumers with download speeds of up to 300 Mbps and more efficient power consumption.”
Qualcomm is overselling the new Gobi part, saying the SD805/Gobi 9×35 combo will support Ultra HD streaming, including streaming to external devices (which does not have much to do with the modem).
Still, it is the first Cat 6 modem capable of hitting 300Mbps, so we have to give credit where credit is due.
