Skip to main content

Qualcomm Snapdragon X20 will bring 1.2Gbps LTE download speeds to phones

qualcomm snapdragon x20 sign poster name logo hq headquarters 02
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Qualcomm may be one of the major companies working on 5G, but that doesn’t mean it has forgotten about LTE. In fact, the company has just unveiled the Snapdragon X20, a new wireless modem that promises a hefty 1.2Gbps download speed over an LTE connection on mobile devices.

That’s a pretty huge 20 percent faster than the company’s previous flagship modem, and it achieves this speed through carrier aggregation, which uses different frequency ranges to download up to 12 different streams of 100Mbps each. Even upload speeds are fast, at a cool 150Mbps.

Recommended Videos

The modem isn’t just targeted at faster download speeds. It also supports 3.5GHz, which is used by Citizens Broadband Radio Service. In other words, it will now support private LTE networks. On top of that, it’ll be able to take LTE phone calls on phones with dual SIM cards.

Of course, just because the modem can handle these data speeds doesn’t mean you’ll be able to get those speeds in the real world. First, you’ll need to be one of only a few people using a particular cell tower, and you’ll need to be near a cell tower that can handle each of the frequency bands used by the modem — and that’s assuming your carrier supports the higher speeds in the first place, which is itself unlikely at this point. Last but not least, you’ll first need to buy a phone that has the new modem installed.

Still, the release is exciting — more and more carriers are likely to support higher LTE speeds, and more phones will have the modem built-in later this year. Qualcomm appears to be starting to lay the groundwork for 5G — higher LTE speeds will play a big role in the larger 5G framework down the line.

Christian de Looper
Christian de Looper is a long-time freelance writer who has covered every facet of the consumer tech and electric vehicle…
Moto Edge X30, first Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 phone likely to launch on December 9
Motorola Edge X30

Motorola has been very active lately with launches in the mobile segment ranging from entry-level to high-end devices. Now it looks like the race for the first Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 smartphone is heating up and Motorola is trying to get the upper hand by being the first to launch a smartphone with the new chipset. The Lenovo-owned smartphone maker has confirmed that it will be announcing an Edge smartphone with Qualcomm’s latest flagship chip on December 9. This is likely to be the Moto Edge X30 (or just Motorola Edge), but there’s also a possibility of the Motorola G200 launching at the same time.

The teaser doesn’t reveal much more about the device, and a lot is still under wraps, but there are some tidbits that we can gather from the phone’s certification. For starters, its battery certification shows a 5,000mAh cell with a charging capacity of 68.2W, which is one of the highest in Motorola phones. Consumers in China are likely to have many choices in terms of storage as there are reportedly 6GB/8GB/12GB/16GB RAM and 128GB/256GB/512GB storage options. Chen Jin, Lenovo China’s head of mobile division, also revealed that the phone has Gorilla Glass protection on both sides as well as the latest My UX 3.0 software.

Read more
Meet the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, Qualcomm’s flagship mobile chip for 2022
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor..

At the annual Snapdragon Tech Summit, Qualcomm officially unveiled the newly renamed Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, its new flagship-grade mobile system on a chip (SoC). The new mobile chip is expected to power a large number of premium-tier Android devices next year and succeeds the Snapdragon 888 from 2020. Through 2022, it will compete against Samsung’s soon-to-be-announced Exynos 2200, MediaTek’s recently announced Dimensity 9000, and Apple's A15 Bionic chips that power the current crop of iPhones.
What's new?
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is the second mobile processor after the MediaTek Dimensity 9000 to use a 4nm manufacturing process. It is claimed to be the first mobile chipset to incorporate a 10-Gigabit modem-RF combo, as well as the world’s first 18-bit Image Signal Processor (ISP) -- a claim MediaTek would certainly contest given that the Dimensity 9000 also boasts of an 18-bit ISP. Interestingly, Qualcomm also seems to have missed the bus as far as LPDDR5X DRAM is concerned since the spec sheet only mentions support for LPDDR5.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 uses ARM’s Cortex X2 core -- which at first glance sounds like an incremental upgrade over the existing Arm Cortex X1 core used in the Snapdragon 888 series. What makes it radically different, however, is that the Cortex X2 core is based on an entirely new chip architecture called the ARMv9. The move to ARMv9 chips marks a significant change in ARM’s chip architecture strategy as it is the company’s first chip architecture change in a decade. All ARM-based mobile processors since 2011 -- including the Snapdragon 888 series from last year -- used the older ARMv8 architecture.

Read more
Your $1,000 flagship may not have faster 5G speeds than a budget phone
Moto Edge 20 Lite, OnePlus Nord 2, Oppo Find X3 Lite, and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3.

After spending over $1,000 on a flagship 5G phone, you might think you're getting the fastest network speeds possible. After all, isn't that what you're paying for? But our recent network testing shows that may very well not be the case, with 5G performance on flagship phones being minimally better than budget phones, and in some cases, actually worse.

To give you some context, earlier this year, we put the 5G-capable MediaTek Dimensity 700 against the Qualcomm Snapdragon 480 in a test to see which processor delivered the best 5G performance and had the best daily user experience. Six months on, we’re going to take a look at four new 5G phones with different chips to see how they compare to answer this question: Does paying more for a smartphone with a flagship processor inside give you the fastest network connection, or is it all pumped-up marketing?
Understanding 5G
Before going into the details, we received some very interesting feedback from MediaTek after our last test, which is also relevant to this one. MediaTek contacted Digital Trends to discuss the 5G speed test results, as the Dimensity 700-powered Realme 8 5G couldn’t match the Oppo A54 5G with a Qualcomm chip inside. The company then took its own test equipment to the area where I had tested the phones, and in conversations afterwards, it gave plenty of insight into how 5G varies across phones, networks, and location.

Read more