Smartphones with first MediaTek soc with 5g modem coming early next year

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The first smartphones with a MediaTek soc that has a built-in 5G modem will arrive early next year. The Taiwanese manufacturer announced this on Computex. The soc does not have a name yet, but the manufacturer has already shared some details.

The 5g modem will only work at low frequencies below 6GHz, but cannot handle mmWave frequencies, MediaTek says. As a result, the 5G speed is limited, because providers can offer the most speed and capacity via mmWave frequencies such as 26GHz. The modem is called Helio M70. It also supports 4g, 3g and 2g. The maximum 5G speeds are 4.7Gbit/s down and 2.5Gbit/s up.

MediaTek has the soc made on a 7nm FinFet process, presumably at TSMC. The soc has Cortex A77 cores, which ARM announced this week. The Mali G77 GPU on the new Valhall architecture is also in the soc, according to the chip designer. The soc is also equipped with a new processor core for AI applications. In addition, the soc with a new core for processing images supports cameras with a maximum resolution of eighty megapixels. Such sensors have not yet been announced, but Samsung already has a 64-megapixel camera in the line-up.

The soc will go to smartphone manufacturers in the summer and will appear in new models from early 2020, MediaTek says. Current socs still have a separate modem for 5g. It is obvious that Qualcomm and Samsung, among others, will also produce socs with a built-in 5G modem in the coming year. Integration into the soc reduces the power consumption of a modem.

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