Gobi

At Qualcomm’s 3G/LTE Summit in Hong Kong, Qualcomm released some details about the modem that will be integrated into their Snapdragon 820 SoC. On the LTE side, Qualcomm is using what they call an X12 modem, which supports UE category 12 on the downlink with speeds of up to 600 Mbps. This is enabled by a move from 64QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) to 256QAM when compared to previous UE Cat. 9 modems like the Snapdragon 810’s integrated modem. However, given that this is enabled by using higher order modulation schemes there is reduced tolerance for noise within the signal. In some situations, higher speeds might be possible but there’s definitely a point where additional speed isn’t viable through such techniques. On the uplink, category...