Qualcomm has announced its next-gen wireless chips for mobile devices and routers. The main highlighting feature of this chip is that it will support the newer Wi-Fi 6E standard. The “E” in Wi-Fi 6E stands for “extended” as the new standard adds the 6GHz spectrum that should offer less network congestion and faster connections.
According to the Qualcomm, two FastConnect chips can reach theoretical speeds of up to 3Gbps for the FastConnect 6700 and up to 3.6Gbps for the FastConnect 6900 when using 160 MHz wide channels. With speeds up to 3.6 Gbps and “VR-class low latency” of “less than 3ms,” Qualcomm says its Wi-Fi 6E chips “provide a strong foundation for this rapidly growing industry segment.”
We are expecting to see this chip in high-end devices in early 2021. Qualcomm has already put out its top-of-the-line Snapdragon chips for this year, and they’re currently using the FastConnect 6800, which does not include 6GHz support. Now smartphone manufacturers could choose to use one of these newer Wi-Fi chips, but how many of them will do it instead of waiting for Qualcomm to bake it in their Snapdragon chip is questionable.
In addition to the phone chips, Qualcomm also announced a range of Wi-Fi 6E chips for routers. They fall under Qualcomm’s Networking Pro series. These chips will be able to support anywhere from six to sixteen concurrent Wi-Fi streams and maximum theoretical speeds ranging from 5.4 Gbps to 10.8 Gbps. Qualcomm hopes that these chips will to bring a new era of Wi-Fi performance and capability.