From PC Mag: Qualcomm may have just announced a key component in next year's OnePlus 7: tiny antenna modules that fit new "millimeter wave" 5G frequencies into phones.
I'm mentioning the OnePlus 7 because OnePlus CEO Pete Lau told me in Shanghai recently that his company is committed to being in the first round of 5G phones.
The super-high-speed varieties of 5G will rely on millimeter wave, a type of frequency that hasn't been used in mobile devices before because it's short range, doesn't penetrate walls well, and (until now) required complex antenna arrays. Qualcomm's breakthrough, announced today, is to create mmWave antennas that are "shorter than the tip of your finger and about a quarter of the width," said Sherif Hanna, staff manager for technical marketing at Qualcomm.
The modules' tiny size means that four can be placed on a typical smartphone. That's important because "you're holding it wrong" becomes a big deal with mmWave, which can be blocked by your hand. With four modules, you probably won't be covering one of them.
The new modules cover up to 800MHz of frequencies in the 26, 28 and 37GHz bands. Qualcomm is also announcing 5G modules for bands between 3.3GHz and 5GHz, which are not in the short-term plan for the US but are part of other countries' strategies.
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