Since the reveal of 100 Gigabit internet by Gigabyte, the internet carriers have been trying hard to increase the speeds of wireless connectivity. Currently, the global standard of wireless connectivity is 4G LTE and it is pretty much available on every phone that has been released in 2018.
The 5G technology is the next landmark that the companies behind wireless connectivity Verizon and AT&T are trying to achieve.
The technology is expected to be rolled out globally during the summer next year. According to reports Verizon and Samsung have shaken their hands to get the technology out by June of 2019.
Samsung’s secret 10th-anniversary edition device is expected to be the first smartphone to feature full 5G connectivity. The modem that is required to achieve speeds up to 20 Gigabits (expected top speed of a 5G connection) is made by Qualcomm the renowned smartphone silicon maker. Qualcomm has been providing its expertise to smartphone OEMs to develop hardware that can handle such data transfer rate.
In case of an Android device, we see the SOEs (System on the chip that is the combination of a modem, CPU cluster and a GPU) are predominantly provided by Qualcomm. That used to be the case with IOS devices too a few years ago. But Apple has the required technology to produce smartphone chips nowadays. So, we have Apple’s in-house processors in the iPhones and the iPads.
However, the modems that Apple uses for connectivity are provided by Qualcomm. Recently both firms have started filing more and more lawsuits against each other which have been one of the reasons of slowing productions of the iPhones hence lower profits for both firms.
Due to the legal quarrel between these firms, it is highly unlikely that Qualcomm will provide its 5G modem to Apple. Which may or may not cause a trouble for the future iPhone as iPhones were the last high-end smartphones to get 4G. Which turned out to be a good bet as the iPhones that started supporting 4G connectivity were better at handling the heat and battery dissipation.
That is history now and seeing how the world of smartphones moving, getting a technological advantage is always better to squeeze the economic rents out of the market.
Now the problem for Apple is that it has to rely on Intel which too is producing modems to support 5G connectivity, but that cannot be done until 2020. So, it is highly unlikely to see the next iPhone with 5G connectivity however many Android devices are sure to get the technology on board.