Qualcomm unveils X65 5G modem with speeds of up to 10 Gbps

If you recently bought one of Samsung’s S21 series smartphones before today, you’d be running the Snapdragon 888 with the fastest 5G mobile hardware in the world - the Qualcomm X60 5G modem. However, that’s not the case any longer, as Qualcomm has already launched their new X65 5G modem - with blistering fast download speeds of up to 10 Gbps.

Read more: Forget 5G, the US and China are already fighting for 6G dominance

To put that in perspective, Qualcomm’s modem X60 can touch a theoretical speed ceiling of 7Gbps, whose rival Mediatek’s brand-new M80 modem could hit up to 7.67 Gbps. Now that Qualcomm has built the 10Gbps capable X65 5G modem to be compatible with the 5G upcoming Release 16 specification, the new platform supports several new improvements over its predecessor.

Some of the new network capabilities coming to devices that ship with the new X65 5G modem later this year include mmWave and Sub-6 bandwidth aggregation, longer coverage range and improved bandwidth capacity. The most important change on the X65 5G modem will be the ability to “update” the modem via OTA updates in line with the Release 16 Specification.

Also read: MediaTek M80 5G modem brings 7.6Gbps downlink speed, to come in devices later this year

These chips are also designed for the next generation of processors - while the older modems work on 5nm chipsets which are currently the smallest size available to consumers, the X65 5G is actually designed to work on a smaller die size too - 4nm, to be precise. This will also bring additional energy efficiency benefits. 

If you’re asking “who actually needs 5G speeds of up to 10 Gbps?”, the answer would be a lot of people, actually. Thanks to the Fixed Wireless Access platform, your local internet service provider can use the X65 modem to provide high-speed internet access in very congested neighbourhoods. Having 10 Gigabit 5G access available to distribute over densely populated localities could come in very handy.