Samsung Exynos 8895 chipset that powers the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus packs a Cat.16 LTE modem with 1 Gb downlink speed, which is enough for a lot of people. However, the company managed to make some improvements of the modem and announced a new Cat.18 6CA (Carrier aggregation) technology for up to 1.2 Gbps downlink speeds.

The new modem would download a full-length movie in HD resolution within 10 seconds. It also supports 4×4 MIMO (Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output) and higher-order 256 QAM (Quadrature amplitude modulation) scheme to maximize the data transfer rate.

Samsung will start mass production of the modem by the end of this year so it is safe to say that a new Exynos 9 SoC that will power next year's Galaxy S9 will come with it.