Qualcomm Snapdragon X70: Only 5G modem that can connect to every band

When you buy a smartphone in certain countries, you sometimes need to check the radio bands it supports. After all, you don’t want to buy a phone that doesn’t support the bands most prevalent across your area. If you don’t check, you could end up not getting the fastest speeds — or have trouble connecting altogether.

See also: What is C-Band 5G and where is it available?

This annoyance could be a thing of the past — for flagship phones anyway — thanks to the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X70 modem. This is the first-ever 5G-capable radio chip that can connect to every commercial band: from 600MHz to 41GHz.

Theoretically, that would mean any phone you buy with this modem should connect to every network in any part of the world. Of course, the smartphone’s manufacturer needs to include the correct radio front-end hardware too, but in a perfect world, you’d never need to check radio band support again if this modem is onboard.

Snapdragon X70: Fast speeds with AI smarts

As usual, Qualcomm is most focused on the speed and stability of this new fifth-generation product. It has the same peak speed as its predecessor: 10Gbps. Its peak uplink speed is 3.5Gbps, which will result in more stable connections for users.

The chip also is the first to use AI to enhance throughput as well as energy efficiency. Essentially, the built-in AI processor can tweak the Snapdragon X70 on the fly to deliver the best performance in the most energy-efficient way for your particular situation at that very moment.

According to Qualcomm, this could result in up to 60% better power efficiency. However, that number is probably only attainable in the most ideal of situations.

Qualcomm hopes to start showing off the Snapdragon X70 to smartphone manufacturers in the second half of this year. Theoretically, that would mean we could see the first commercial phone with the X70 at the end of 2022.