5G Is The Future - Qualcomm MWC Booth Tour with WhatGear
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So I think people generally think Qualcomm only makE Cpu's & Gpu's for smartphones... They actually do a lot more than that. For that reason I'm going to try my best not to mention phones in this tour. To be honest I bet Qualcomm must be getting annoyed with consumers only recognising for Snapdragon phones processors. So let's start the tour...
QUALCOMM ARE NOT JUST ALL ABOUT SMARTPHONES!
Did you know Qualcomm are behind the scenes in most of those fast chargers you're using today? And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Quick Charge 4 technology was announced in November of last year. I've heard promises of five hours of charge in five minutes.
THE CONNECTED CAR 5G
The connected car on show was a prototype escalade. This escalade has had some serious upgrades. Inside is a bunch of Qualcomm processors. The snapdragon 828 to be precise which is similar to the ones seen in smartphones... I know I said I'd try not to bang on about smartphones but it was unavoidable in this case.
This Escalade has 7 monitors with snapdragons powering the infotainment system. It also has Qualcomms very own Cellular V2X chip. Qualcomm call the CV2X nervous system of the car. It will allow the car to communicate to other connected devices on pedestrians, cyclists and with other connected cars.
Qualcomm envisage a day where connected cars can even communicate with traffic lights... I'm sure London's council's could afford to upgrade their traffic lights. Especially with the amount of parking tickets they've given me over the years.
Anyway the idea is that the connected car could receive 5G on the move. Which could mean up to 4.5gbps download speeds. With that many screens and that much data that would make this the perfect multiplayer mobile online gaming session mobile...or you could use the car for business conferences and other productive stuff like that.
QUALCOMM HALO - WIRELESS CAR CHARGING
Now check this out. The Qualcomm Halo. Its basically wireless charging for you electric car...but this isn't done conductively. It's actually done using frequency, resonance charging using a magnetic field. so no more wires. Just drive over a Halo point and your car will charge. It supports 4 levels of charging between 3.7kw and 22kw. They've even partnered with Formula E to test this tech and some of the cars there are already using Qualcomms Halo.
THE FUTURE OF 5G WITH QUALCOMM
Now onto 5G. Qualcomm had their 1st prototype and reference 5G smartphone design on display. They even had a working Qualcomm X50 5G modem receiving up to 4.37 Gbps download speeds. This 5G speed was being achieved with a 800mghz bandwidth and 28ghz mm wave frequency, and what does that even mean? It's fast that's what it means...It's fast. When we talk about speeds we could see up to 10 times the speeds of current 4G. That means you could watch a whole lot of funny cat videos NO buffering.
SNAPDRAGON WINDOWS PC
Qualcomm also had a bunch of pre release high capacity modems on show. Also a showcase of current modems from various manufacturers with Qualcomm WiFi processors inside. Also on display was a loads of stuff related to mesh networking or smart home as we like to call it.
Now this was cool personal computers powered by snapdragon processors... similar to those seen in smartphones. These processors are running full Windows 10 and the real advantage with these computers is the snapdragons efficiency when it comes to battery life.
With the snapdragon processors not draining so much power, I hear a pc running one of these can last around 5 to 9 hrs longer than a competitors compact computers running regular Intel or even Apple processors. I heard one of these pc's can stay alive for an entire month on standby mode and that is crazy.
Another advantage of a snapdragon powered PC is its LTE. So they have 4G capabilities just like a smartphone...I know I said I'd try not to mention it but again unavoidable. The only downside with LTE for me is it would probably mean one more pricey monthly fee maybe.
QUALCOMM MISSION CRITICAL
Now this bit was bit over my head, but Qualcomm have a bunch of stuff they're working on that they call mission critical. It's basically factory equipment that communicates over 5G instead of the normal wired networks. Think of an entire factory running autonomously on 5G. They're calling it 4th Industrial revolution. 1st it was mechanical, then electrical, then digital and now connect...tical? Connected...connected. Qualcomm have partnered with Bosche and they're working on this.
QUALCOMM LTE SMARTWEAR
Now smartwear. Qualcomm make the chips that go inside all of these watches. So watches that work almost like a smartphone...I know and I'm sorry. So these watches all have Qualcomm chips for communications between other smart devices and networks. Some have GPS, BT, Wi-Fi.
Also they provide these same chips to designer brands for their smartwatches as well. So you might be paying top price for just the name of the designer. However the processors remain the same. So the smart money is on how smart you wanna be... like what I did there? Also Sony use the Qualcomm Bluetooth chips in some of the audio products. I hear they're pretty good.
VR GAMING ON SNAPDRAGON
Now my favourite. You know they used to call me the gamesmaster right? Any way Qualcomm had a bunch or AR demos running. Showcasing the power of next gen AI. Also on show was Qualcomms centric 2400. The world's 1st 10nm server processor for cloud gaming.
Of course Qualcomm have delved into the world of VR. They had some really cool demos on show. I didn't have a go though...I didn't want to show anyone up with my games master skills. But I must say it's impressive to see what's possible with the power of the Adreno GPU. They also had some console quality gaming running off yep you guessed it...a smartphone. A prototype by the looks of it.
Now have you heard? Qualcomm's chips actually process a lot of your audio on your tablets and smart devices. They had a few demos on this too. Also the snapdragons feature voice interactions. This was present in that crazy escalade at the beginning of the video. You can ask it to wind down your windows and it even works with loud background sounds using echo cancellation.
So anyway that's pretty much it. I've tried my best to summarize as much of the Qualcomm MWC 2018 booth as possible for you guys. You know what though... I can't wait to see 5G in smartphones & how good the snapdragon 845 really is...in smartphones...but that's just me.
