This year, Samsung was the first mobile maker to find a way to release a phone capable of connecting at 1Gbps. Next year, it’ll go even faster.
You might be waiting for the Galaxy Note 8 expecting it to be the best of the best, or even one of Apple’s next iPhones, but it’s not hard to expect that something better will show up next year.
In fact, we already have an idea of what that will be, with word from Samsung that next year’s phones will support a new mobile connection that rocks an even faster speed than current phones can pull down.
While this year’s Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ have been joined by the HTC U11 and Sony Xperia XZ Premium as being the only phones capable of hitting benchmark-level speeds in Australia of 1Gbps — an honour that you can only find in a very select few places — next year’s achievement will be even higher, something Samsung will be able to do with a new modem.
Samsung’s latest development is the Category 18 modem, capable of hitting download speeds of up to 1.2Gbps, making it theoretically possible to download a full-length high-definition movie in the space of ten seconds. Yep, you read that right.
That’s getting close to the minimum speeds expected of 5G, as manufacturers and telcos alike try to squeeze every drop of 4G out, and it’s something Samsung will be doing with increased carrier aggregation improving the overall bandwidth, while the technology aims to offer more stable transfers.
In Australia, telecommunication providers are presently rolling out support for these high-speed technologies, evident from the few devices that can put these connections to use, including Netgear’s Nighthawk M1 and the phones from Samsung, Sony, and HTC.
However, while Category 16’s 1Gbps (1000Mbps, or 125 megabytes per second) is something the telcos are beginning to support, the Category 18 speed of 1.2Gbps (1200Mbps roughly, or 150 megabytes per second) manages to push even beyond what the likes of Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone presently support.
Good news, though: the telcos all have time to catch up, with the Category 18 modem not expected to find its way into Samsung’s phones until next year.
That means you can expect Category 18’s 150MB per second maximum speed possible in the Galaxy S9, and whatever else Samsung cooks up for 2018.
