Qualcomm has officially released its latest Snapdragon 855 SoC. According to the company, this chip is the world’s first commercial platform to fully support a multi-gigabit 5G connectivity. Since the release of this processor, many people directly equate the Snapdragon 855 with 5G network and believe that any smartphone equipped with Snapdragon 855 processor supports 5G. This is not entirely true. It is at the prerogative of the manufacturer to decide whether its SD855 smartphone will support 5G network or not.
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The baseband of the Snapdragon 855 is the Snapdragon X24 LTE modem, which supports LTE Cat 20. Although the network connection speed is twice that of the current 4G LTE network, it still only supports 4G. If a Snapdragon 855 smartphone needs to support 5G network connection, it also needs the external Snapdragon X50 modem, which means that the Snapdragon 855 chip which integrates a Qualcomm X50 modem can perfectly support the 5G network connection.
When the 5G application becomes preponderant next year, mobile phone manufacturers can decide whether an SD855 smartphone will have a 5G version. The simple truth is that the 5G version will be more expensive than its 4G counterpart due to baseband differences which is more expensive for the former. Therefore, if you are planning to purchase a 5G mobile phone next year, you need to pay attention to whether the phone labeling parameters are clearly marked to support 5G or Qualcomm X50 baseband.