Qualcomm has unveiled its Snapdragon 855, which is claimed to be the world's first commercial mobile platform supporting multi-gigabit 5G, industry-leading AI and immersive extended reality (XR) collectively. But the platform's architecture leaves room for further improvement before it can help usher in a new decade of revolutionary mobile devices.

Qualcomm states that the Snapdragon 855 platform will not only support 4G LTE and 5G NR (New Radio) dual mobile communication standards, but also supports sub-6GHz and 28GHz and 39GHz millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency bands, achieving more than 5Gbps transmission capability.

Judging from Qualcomm's latest revelation of its 5G communication architecture, Digitimes Research believes Qualcomm-based 5G smartphones for 2019 will come with a discrete plug-in 5G baseband chip that is independent from the integrated Snapdragon 855 and 4G LTE SoC chip.

Qualcomm also says that the Snapdragon 855 platform will be equipped with a X24 LTE modem, which can provide up to 2Gbps download transmission speed and up to 300Mbps uploading transmission bandwidth. These will be enabled by an integrated SoC consisted of a 7nm application processor and a 10nm baseband chip packed with two 14nm discrete RF chips for supporting sub-6 GHZ and mmWave frequency bands, respectively.

Qualcomm also emphasizes that it is necessary to modularize RF component in order to support both 4G and 5G sub-6GHz/mmWave technologies. Adopting a different approach to 4G LTE mobile solutions, which have discrete baseband chips, RF transceivers, RF front-end components, and antenna, Qualcomm has integrated the baseband chip and RF transceiver into its 5G modem, while the mmWave antenna module contains mmWave RF transceiver, RF front-end products, antenna, and power management chips.

Since the Snapdragon 855 platform also supports next-generation Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and 802.11ay (60 GHz transmission) communication standards, smartphones built using Snapdragon 855 solutions rolled out in 2019 will enable users to experience full Gbps transmission capability from outdoor to indoor and from mobile to wireless networks.

Qualcomm's adoption for a plug-in 5G communication architecture reflects that it is conservative about the prospects of 5G smartphone shipments in 2019 because telecom operators are not as enthusiastic about deploying expensive 5G networks as they did for 4G ones, especially for the deployment of large-scale 5G mmWave networks.

The 4G LTE standards are mature with better coverage. The difference between the highest 2Gbps transmission peak for 4G networks and the current 5G transmission capacity is also rather limited, which means there will not be enough incentives to spur replacement demand for 5G phones.

Qualcomm's configuration for 5G phones shows that the design of 5G smartphones will evolve in stages. And under this circumstance, 4G LTE-based smartphones will continue to be the mainstream in 2019.

A Qualcomm representative told Digitimes Research on the sideline of the recent Snapdragon Tech Summit that the company is working on some solutions to further optimize the performance of 5G phones, such as lowering the power consumption for large bandwidth transmission. It means the current version of the Snapdragon 855 SoC is more of an attempt to test the waters.