Qualcomm Seeks Wider 5G Adoption Via New Platforms, Reference Designs

At its 5G Summit Wednesday, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 778G 5G mobile platform for high-tier smartphones; plug-and-play 5G cards to spur 5G adoption in PCs, tablets and routers; and upgrades to its X65 5G model-RF system in anticipation of 5G millimeter-wave rollouts in China. The 778G 5G mobile platform, designed for smartphones from Honor, iQoo, Motorola, Oppo, Realme and Xiaomi, is geared to mobile gaming and has advanced AI for photos and videos, Qualcomm said. The X65 and X62 5G M.2 reference designs for PCs, always-connected PCs, laptops, customer premises equipment, extended reality, gaming and other mobile broadband devices, support 5G sub-6 GHz spectrum and extended-range mmWave, said the company. Their form factor allows OEMs to reduce time to launch for high-performance 5G-enabled products, it said. The Snapdragon X65 supports spectrum aggregation of up to 1 GHz of mmWave spectrum and 300 MHz of sub-6 GHz spectrum for frequency division duplex and time division duplex systems, said the chipmaker. Upgrades to the 5G modem-to-antenna solution, announced in February, include improved power efficiency and support for wider mmWave carriers, it said.