Qualcomm announces new Snapdragon 778G 5G mobile platform

Handset makers Honor, iQOO, Motorola, OPPO, Realme and Xiaomi are expected to start rolling out devices based on it soon

Mobile chipset company Qualcomm on Wednesday announced its new Snapdragon 778G 5G Mobile Platform that is slated to be used by smartphone vendors like Motorola, Realme and Xiaomi.

The Snapdragon 778G is designed to deliver cutting-edge mobile gaming and accelerated artificial intelligence (AI) to enable stunning photo and video experiences on smartphones. The announcement was made at the annual Qualcomm 5G Summit.

"Snapdragon 778G was developed to address the growing demand by global OEMs for more platform options in the high-tier. Snapdragon 778G brings many of the latest premium technologies and features into the high-tier to help make next-generation experiences more broadly accessible," Qualcomm Technologies Inc vice president product management Kedar Kondap said.

While the final prices of smartphones are decided by the vendors, the prices of devices featuring the Snapdragon 778G 5G mobile platform could range from $300-500 (about Rs 22,000-37,000), he added.

Handset makers Honor, iQOO, Motorola, OPPO, Realme and Xiaomi are expected to start rolling out devices based on the Snapdragon 778G 5G Mobile Platform in the coming quarters.

Qualcomm also announced the Snapdragon X65 and X62 5G M.2 Reference Designs for accelerating 5G adoption across industry segments, including PCs, Always-Connected PCs (ACPCs), laptops, Customer Premises Equipment (CPEs), XR, gaming and other mobile broadband (MBB) devices.

"We've seen dramatic growth in data consumption as a result of remote work and higher mobility. To help meet this data demand and create exciting new products and experiences, our new 5G M.2 Reference Designs tackle many 5G design complexities upfront so that OEMs don't have to,” Durga Malladi, senior vice president and general manager, 4G/5G at Qualcomm Technologies Inc said.

Also read: Apple to ditch Qualcomm's 5G modem in 2023 iPhone series

The company is committed to leading the acceleration and expansion of 5G beyond smartphones, Malladi added.

"We've built world-class engineering and customer service teams dedicated to 5G mobile broadband to equip customers with advanced reference designs.

“We are empowering the ecosystem to bring next-generation Release 16 5G products as early as late 2021 and helping create new business opportunities across computing, CPEs, XR, gaming, industrial IoT and beyond,” he said.

Besides, Qualcomm has upgraded features and capabilities to its Snapdragon X65 5G Modem-RF System. The upgrades build upon the fourth generation 5G modem-to-antenna solution, which was announced in February.

As the world's first 10 Gigabit 5G and first 3GPP release 16 modem-RF system, the software-upgradeable architecture allows future-proofing of solutions powered by Snapdragon X65 that supports and enables acceleration of 5G expansion while enhancing coverage, power efficiency and performance for users.

Upgrades include improved power efficiency and support for wider mmWave carriers.