Qualcomm Snapdragon X55 modem will bring 5G to Always-Connected PCs

As Mobile World Congress 2022 (MWC 2022) prepares to kick off in Barcelona, Qualcomm is heating things up early. The chipmaker today took the wraps off of the new Snapdragon X55, a 5G modem built for everything from smartphones to hotspots and, for the Windows crowd, Always-Connected PCs (ACPS), laptops, and tablets.

According to Qualcomm, the seven-nanometer single-chip modem can support download speeds of upwardly to 7Gbps and upload speeds of 3Gbps over 5G. The modem supports "all major frequency bands," including both mmWave and sub-6GHz, besides as spectrum sharing between 4G and 5G, which allows carriers to use their existing 4G spectrum to back up dynamic 4G and 5G services.

"Qualcomm Technologies is spearheading the first wave of 5G launches with our outset generation 5G mobile platform," said Cristiano Amon, president of Qualcomm Inc., in a press release. "With significant evolution in capabilities and operation, our second generation commercial 5G modem is a truthful testament to the maturity and leadership of our 5G technology. Nosotros expect our 5G platform to advance 5G commercial momentum and power virtually all 5G launches in 2022 while significantly expanding the global 5G rollout footprint."

Snapdragon X55 is expected to brand its way to commercial devices by late 2022, Qualcomm says.

What Snapdragon X55 means for you

Both 5G and ACPCs are in their relative infancies. While 4G has fabricated an appearance on a number of laptops as part of the ACPC push – including those powered by Qualcomm'due south ain ARM processors, similar the HP Envy x2 and the Lenovo Yoga C630 – the category hasn't exactly taken off just yet. Meanwhile, it's still early days for 5G, which has quite a road ahead of it, in terms of carrier support (no, 5GE doesn't count) and device adoption, before information technology's as prevalent equally LTE is today.

The success of 5G won't rely on its implementation in ACPCs; it's a natural development of mobile internet, and there'south a whole smartphone market that will clinch its saturation over the next several years. ACPCs, yet, could benefit greatly from the blistering speeds that 5G promises to deliver.

For Windows 10 on ARM PCs leveraging Qualcomm's Snapdragon platform, in particular, existence early to prefer 5G could increase their draw with consumers. As Qualcomm prepares to pepper its "extreme" 8cx processor across the market, in addition to the Snapdragon 850 PCs out there, information technology already has multi-twenty-four hour period bombardment life and enough computing ability for most needs on lock. But even LTE connectivity on the current ingather of PCs can remain a pain bespeak, depending on how congested the network in your area is, and 5G's speed potential.

Of class, all of this depends on how eager PC makers are to push 5G connectivity across their lineups. Pricing remains another concern, as some of the early ACPCs to hit the market drew criticism for their price-to-functioning ratio.

Still, if you keep an heart on the PC world, the end of this year and going into 2022 could prove to be an interesting time for new devices.

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