Alongside the new Adaptive ANC technology, and the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2, Qualcomm made yet another announcement at IFA 2020. The company has said that it will bring 5G to the Snapdragon 4-series of smartphone processors next year.
That’s a pretty big deal, both for Qualcomm and Android smartphones. The US chipmaker has been steadily increasing the number of Mobile Platforms it makes that support the new 5G networks that are slowly rolling out around the world. Up until now, Qualcomm had chips in the 7-series and 6-series of chipsets that offered 5G outside of its flagship Snapdragon 8-series processors. Adding 5G to 4-series will bring the faster networking technology to a whole range of cheap smartphones, thereby helping in the growth of 5G adoption in the world.
That should also help cheaper Android smartphones maintain traction as 5G becomes more widely available over the next few years. Qualcomm is planning on launching the first 5G-enabled Snapdragon 4-series processor in 2021, and is expecting phone makers to start releasing 5G smartphones with the new processors in Q1 itself. According to the company, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Motorola are among the companies that will be designing phones with the new chipsets.
We are still waiting on more details to come out regarding the new 5G processors, but that might take some time. It’s likely that Qualcomm will make more detailed announcements sometime around December which is when it usually launches new chipsets, including its flagship processors.
