Qualcomm Incorporated on Wednesdauy announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Qualcomm Technologies, is providing the technology for a Samsung Galaxy S4 with LTE-Advanced capabilities.
According to a press release, the Samsung Galaxy S4 LTE-A will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor. The device will see launches on all three mobile operators’ LTE networks in Korea, starting with SK Telecom, which just last week announced it had hit the switch on the world’s first LTE-A network. Launches with KT and LGU+ are scheduled to follow.
The new Galaxy S4 LTE-A will use carrier aggregation, a feature of LTE-A that combines radio channels within and across bands to increase user data rates and reduce latency. While current LTE mobile devices support several LTE radio channels, they can only download on one channel at a time. LTE carrier aggregation, however, allows for simultaneous download on two or more LTE radio channels, effectively enabling full use of the nominal chipset LTE data rate category.
Qualcomm claims the Galaxy S4 LTE-A is capable of data rates up to 150 Mbps.
Snapdragon 800 processors feature an integrated multimode 3G/4G LTE modem and are designed to support LTE carrier aggregation without sacrificing battery life.
The news comes as Dave Mayo, senior vice president of technology, strategy, finance and development at T-Mobile said his company will be rolling out LTE-A “features” by the end of the year.
