The three announcements were made at the company's annual 5G summit, held online this year due to the ongoing pandemic.
The 778G is expected to be used in smartphones in the second quarter of 2021, the company said in a statement, adding that brands like Honor — Huawei's former budget smartphone division which it sold last year — iQoo, Motorola, OPPO, realme and Xiaomi would all be launching models based on the chip.
The 778G is expected to sit midway between the 888 SoC and the 765G, and will be built using 6nm technology. The SoC is claimed to be able to provide better mobile gaming and improved AI that will manifest itself in better photos and videos.
“Snapdragon 778G brings many of the latest premium technologies and features into the high-tier to help make next generation experiences more broadly accessible.”
The new SoC will include the integrated Snapdragon X53 5G Modem-RF System to help deliver mmWave and sub-6 5G capabilities.
The new reference designs are powered by the first 3GPP Release 16 5G modem-RF solutions - Snapdragon X65 and X62 5G Modem-RF Systems – and are claimed to support better spectrum aggregation, global 5G sub-6 and extended-range mmWave, and high power efficiency.
The company said these reference designs for a plug-and-play M.2 form factor would allow OEMs to reduce time to launch for high-performance 5G-enabled products.
“We’ve seen a 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,” said Durga Malladi, senior vice-president and general manager, 4G/5G, Qualcomm Technologies.
“Qualcomm Technologies is committed to leading the acceleration and expansion of 5G beyond smartphones. 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.”
The company also said it would be launching new, upgraded features and capabilities for the Snapdragon X65 5G Modem-RF System, including improved power
efficiency and support for wider mmWave carriers – a key requirement ahead of the rollout of 5G mmWave networks in China.
“The Snapdragon X65 is leading the way in the 10 Gigabit 5G era, and defining what’s possible by expanding coverage and capacity, power efficiency and superior performance for the end user,” said Malladi.
“Qualcomm Technologies pioneered 5G with mmWave delivering extreme capacity, ultra-high throughput and low latency to reshape mobile experiences."
