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Qualcomm has revealed that its fast-approaching Snapdragon 810 chip will support Category 9 LTE carrier aggregation.
This means the chip’s modem boasts a theoretical maximum download speed of 450Mbps.
Qualcomm says it managed to achieve these blistering speeds during internal tests with three LTE carriers, each with a bandwidth of up to 20MHz.
It also marks the Snapdragon as Qualcomm’s first application processor to support Cat. 9 LTE.
Alex Katouzian, Qualcomm’s Senior VP of Product Management, said: “Qualcomm Technologies continues to be a leader in the mobile industry with commercialisation of the world’s leading modem technology, delivering fast and reliable cellular data connectivity solutions.”
“This provides speedy application performance and feature richness across greater coverage areas enabled by LTE Category 9 connectivity.”
He added: “With powerful processors like the Snapdragon 810, we look forward to continuing to drive LTE innovation in the high tier to ensure exceptional user experiences as mobile broadband demand grows.”
Qualcomm says its new chip will be available to customers in early 2015, and has been rumoured to debut in the Samsung Galaxy S6, the LG G4, the Sony Xperia Z4, and the HTC One M9 Hima.
The chip-maker was also keen to point out that its LTE-Advanced modem would be backwards compatible with ‘all major cellular standards’ including GSM, CDMA, and HSPA .
The news comes just days after Samsung was reported to be working on its own Exynos chip capable of supporting Cat. 10 LTE.
The current top-tier LTE modem is Cat. 6, which caps out at about 300Mbps, assuming your carrier will provide such generous data speeds.
It’s expected Samsung will release two variants of its Samsung Galaxy S6 – one powered by the Snapdragon 810, and one powered by its custom-built Exynos chip.
Read More: Qualcomm refutes claims of Snapdragon 810 delays
