There’s no doubt that 5G connectivity has caught heat in 2019, with everyone from the telecom operators, chip makers, and phone makers alike placing a ton of focus on the technology. Well, the Samsung is now preparing to usher an era of new 5G phones, which will be made possible with its first 5G-integrated chipset.
Samsung Exynos 980 is the name of the first chipset from the company that does not require the 5G modem to be added alongside the processor. Instead, the core and 5G modem are integrated into one chip on the Exynos 980 – meaning it will take up lesser space within phones as compared to 5G-supported Snapdragon 855 or Exynos chipsets.
The Exynos 980 mobile processor is constructed using an 8nm FiNFET process (same as Exynos 9820 inside the Galaxy S10 lineup) and features a total of eight CPU cores. This includes 2 Cortex-A77 cores clocked at up to 2.2GHz and 6 Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 1.8GHz. This is coupled with the Mali-G76 MP5 GPU, support for UFS 2.1 and eMMC 5.1 storage, and LPDDR4x RAM.
As per the official blogpost, “The modem supports E-UTRA-NR Dual Connectivity (EN-DC), which combines 2CC LTE and 5G connectivity, to maximize mobile downlink speed up to 3.55Gbps,” which is just awesome. The data transfer speeds are, however, limited to a slower 2.55Gbps in 5G connectivity for sub-6GHz spectrums and 1.0Gbps for 4G mobile networks.
In 2019, one cannot go without integrating a neural processing unit (NPU) on-device to handle AI tasks and the Exynos 980 has one as well. The chipset supports display up to WQHD+ (3360×1440 pixels) and a single camera up to 108MP (Samsung is working on camera sensor with such high-megapixels and Xiaomi could be on of the first to launch phones with this sensor in tow). You can also expect to see 20MP+20MP dual-cameras.
Samsung already has four 5G phones in its portfolio, including the S10 Plus 5G, Note 10/Note 10+ 5G, and the recently unveiled Galaxy A90 5G. However, the launch of a chipset that comes integrated with a 5G modem opens up new avenues for Samsung, hinting at a larger focus on faster connectivity. We should expect to see a number of Samsung phones with this chipset in tow as early as Q1 2020.
