Samsung Electronics has announced plans to launch a single-chip 5G modem by the end of the year, placing it in direct competition with Qualcomm.
The company has unveiled the Exynos Modem 5100, which the company says will be the industry's first 5G modem to fully comply with the 3GPP Release 15 5G New Radio standard.
Samsung hopes this will help the modem stand apart from the Qualcomm Snapdragon X50 5G Modem, which was announced in October 2016 and is expected to be set to be available in devices from 18 OEM partners in 2019.
The Exynos Modem 5100 supports both sub 6-GHz and mmWave spectrum as well as connections to legacy networks including 2G, 3G W-CDMA, TD-SCDMA and HSPA, as well as LTE.
It will deliver a maximum downlink speed of 2Gbps in 5G's sub 6-GHz settings and 6Gbps in mmWave settings, as well as maximum downlink speeds of 1.6Gbps in LTE-Advanced networks.
In a statement, Samsung announced it has successfully conducted OTA 5G NR data call testing in a wireless environment using a 5G base station and 5G end user equipment prototype.
The company is also working with a number of partners including global mobile operators to quickly introduce 5G to the market. The modem will also be offered with radio frequency IC, envelope tracking and power management functionality.