Whose 5G mobile phone chips should I buy?

Latest update time：2020-01-20

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In the past six months, the controversy surrounding 5G mobile phones has never stopped.

At first, they argued over "who was the first 5G chip (mobile phone)". Later, they argued over "whether NSA was a fake 5G". Later, they argued over "integrated baseband and external baseband".

A new dispute has started in the past two days, and the focus this time is the N79 frequency band.

For ordinary users who are not very tech-savvy, these endless arguments are really confusing - isn't it just buying a 5G phone? Why is it so troublesome?

In fact, after all, these disputes are caused by the fact that 5G chip technology is not mature enough . In other words, these are normal phenomena in the early stages of 5G mobile phones.

The biggest difference between 5G phones and current 4G phones is the network capability, which is mainly determined by the baseband chip.

The baseband chip is a bit like the " network card " and "cat (modem)" of a mobile phone, while the SoC main chip is a bit like the CPU processor of a computer.

Currently, there are only five manufacturers capable of manufacturing 5G baseband chips, namely Qualcomm, Huawei, MediaTek, Samsung, and Unisoc. There was also Intel in the past, but it later gave up.

The first company to launch the first 5G baseband chip was the veteran giant Qualcomm.

Qualcomm released the X50 5G baseband chip in October 2016. At that time, the global 5G standard had not yet been formulated.

Because it was launched too early, the performance and functions of the X50 are relatively weak and are mainly used in some testing or verification scenarios. No mobile phone manufacturer really dares to use this baseband to mass-produce 5G commercial mobile phones.

In February 2018, Huawei released its first 5G baseband, Balong 5G01, at the MWC World Mobile Congress in Barcelona . Huawei called it the world's first 5G baseband that complies with the 3GPP 5G protocol standard (R15).

Balong 5G01

However, the technology of this 5G01 baseband is not mature enough and cannot be used in mobile phones. It can only be used in 5G CPE.

CPE: A small device that converts 5G signals into Wi-Fi signals.

Soon after, MediaTek, Samsung and Intel successively released their own 5G baseband chips in 2018 (but not commercially available).

Let's call these 5G basebands the first generation 5G basebands .

The data is for reference only (some of them are PPT chips, you know)

This batch of chips has another common feature, that is -

They all work in conjunction with SoC chips through " plug-in mode ".

In other words, the baseband is not integrated into the SoC chip, but is independent of the SoC.

Integrated VS external, of course integrated is better. Integrated baseband is obviously better than external baseband in power consumption control and signal stability.

"Plugin" is equivalent to this

But there was no other way. The technology was not mature at that time and we could only use plug-ins.

In short, in 2018, 5G mobile phones were basically in a state of no "core" available , and there were no commercially released 5G mobile phones on the market.

By 2019, the situation was different. With the determination of 5G standards, the 5G baseband technology of various manufacturers continued to mature, and the second-generation 5G baseband began to emerge.

The first to take action was Huawei.

In January 2019, Huawei released the new 5G baseband Balong 5000. It supports SA and NSA, uses 7nm process, and supports multi-mode.

Overall, Xiaozaojun personally believes that this is the first 5G baseband that reaches the purchase threshold.

Immediately afterwards, Qualcomm released the X55 baseband in February, which also supports SA/NSA, is also 7nm, and supports multi-mode.

Judging from the data on paper, the indicators of X55 are stronger than those of Balong5000.

However, Huawei is moving faster.

In July 2019, when Qualcomm X55 was still in the stage of verbal promotion, Huawei adopted the "Kirin 980 + Balong 5000" solution and released its first 5G mobile phone - Mate20 X 5G . This is also the first 5G mobile phone in China to obtain a network access license.

Because Qualcomm's X55 will not be shipped in batches until the first quarter of 2020 , a number of mobile phone manufacturers including Xiaomi, ZTE, and VIVO could only use Qualcomm SoC chips with external X50 baseband to release their own 5G flagships.

To be honest, if we only look at 5G communication capabilities, the gap is very obvious.

However, many people said that phones that only support NSA are "fake 5G" phones. This is obviously wrong. Both NSA and SA are 5G. Under the premise that SA independent networking has not yet been commercialized, supporting only NSA is sufficient.

*Based on the current information, domestic SA independent networking will be gradually put into commercial use before the end of 2020.

In September 2019, Huawei released the Kirin 990 5G SoC chip , which uses the 7nm EUV process, further widening the gap.

Therefore, for a long period of time in mid-to-late 2019, Huawei's 5G mobile phones sold very well, with sales far ahead of others.

On September 4, Samsung released its own 5G SoC, Exynos 980 (Orion 980), using 8nm process.

A month later, Samsung released the Exynos 990. Compared with the Exynos 980 integrated 5G baseband, the Exynos 990 is an external 5G baseband (Exynos Modem 5123), which is puzzling.

Just when everyone thought that the unbalanced situation would continue until the X55 was launched, a dark horse emerged: our big brother - MediaTek .

On November 26, MediaTek released its own 5G SoC chip, Dimensity 1000 , which was leading in both paper parameters and performance scores, and immediately caused a sensation.

On December 5, Qualcomm finally released its new 5G SoC chips, namely Snapdragon 765 and Snapdragon 865 .

No one expected that Qualcomm, as the main chip supplier for major domestic mobile phone manufacturers ( except Huawei ), would still use an external baseband for its flagship 865 when everyone was waiting for the rice to be cooked . (Snapdragon 765 is an integrated baseband, integrating X52 and supporting 5G, but its overall performance is weaker than 865 and is positioned in the mid-range.)

Suddenly, the whole market was in an uproar.

Let's compare the SoC chips from these manufacturers:

Paper data, for reference only

Considering that Samsung's Exynos 990 is still a long way away from us, in fact, Huawei, MediaTek and Qualcomm are now in fierce competition.

From the perspective of technology, 7nm EUV (Extreme Ultra-violet lithography) is stronger than traditional technology.

From the perspective of network support, both NSA and SA are supported by everyone, so there is nothing much to say.

The main difference lies in whether the baseband is external, whether it supports millimeter wave, and which one has a faster connection speed.

Baseband plug-in

Regarding this issue, although we said earlier that integration is definitely better than plug-ins, the situation here is a bit special:

The fact that Huawei has integrated a 5G baseband does not mean that it is completely stronger than Qualcomm. Part of the reason is that Huawei's Kirin 990 uses last year's ARM A76 architecture (the others use the A77 architecture released by ARM in May this year). It is more difficult to integrate a 5G baseband with the A77.

Moreover, Huawei's integrated 5G baseband also sacrifices some performance. This is one of the reasons why Huawei's connection speed index is obviously lower than the other three in the table above.

In other words, with current technology, it is extremely difficult to achieve a perfect balance between performance, power consumption, and integration.

Fa Ge is very good at this. MediaTek's Dimensity 1000 not only adopts the A77 architecture, but also achieves baseband integration. Its overall performance is not inferior to its competitors, which is very unexpected.

Millimeter wave

Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 does not support integration, and it is said that one of the reasons is because of millimeter wave (after supporting millimeter wave, power consumption and volume increase, so it cannot be integrated).

What is millimeter wave?

5G signals work on the 5G frequency band. The 3GPP standard organization has a clear definition of the 5G frequency band. It is divided into two categories, one is below 6GHz, which we commonly call the Sub-6 frequency band, and the other is above 24GHz, commonly known as the millimeter wave frequency band.

Why does Qualcomm's SoC chip need to support millimeter wave frequency bands?

Because he has to take the US market into consideration. US operator AT&T uses the millimeter wave frequency band.

In fact, there are only a few operators in the world that use millimeter waves, so there is not much point in supporting millimeter waves.

Connection speed

Finally, the connection speed .

Leaving aside millimeter waves, we only look at the speed of Sub-6. Dimensity 1000 is twice as fast as the other two.

There is a reason for this. Dimensity uses dual-carrier aggregation technology, which aggregates two 100MHz frequency bandwidths into 200MHz, doubling the speed.

It is worth mentioning that this 100MHz+100MHz is tailor-made for China Unicom and China Telecom to share and build 5G. They each have 100MHz of frequency band resources at 3.5GHz.

The above is a rough comparison of the network support capabilities of various 5G SoC chips.

If I were to judge based on paper data, Dimensity is indeed the best if we only look at network capabilities. Huawei's Kirin 990 was launched first, but its performance is indeed not as good as that of later products.

Paper is paper, but the real strength still needs to be seen in actual combat. MediaTek Dimensity 1000 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 mobile phones have not been tested by the market yet. We will wait and see closely and judge the performance of each company after a period of time.

Finally, let’s talk about N79 .

As I said before, 5G has many frequency bands. The sub-6GHz frequency bands are as follows:

N79, which is 4400-5000MHz.

The following is the 5G frequency band distribution of domestic operators:

It is very clear that China Unicom or China Telecom users do not need to pay attention to N79 because they will not need it.

So do mobile users have to buy 5G mobile phones that support the N79 frequency band?

The answer is: China Mobile has not yet used N79, but it will use it in the second half of 2020 or next year.

From the perspective of an ordinary consumer, if I were a mobile user (or planning to port my number to a mobile network), I would of course prefer to buy a 5G mobile phone that supports the N79 frequency band, which would get everything done in one go.

From this perspective, Huawei has the advantage:

Right? After all, each of the three companies has its own merits.

Okay, after talking so much, it’s time to end.

Regarding the advice on buying 5G phones, I still say the same old thing - 5G chip technology is not yet mature, and 5G phones will change a lot in the future. The price of 5G phones will also fluctuate greatly. If your 4G phone is still usable, then wait a little longer. There is no need to buy a 5G phone now. If you don't want to wait for a long time, then at least wait until March-April, when Dimensity 1000 and Snapdragon 865 are on the market and have been verified by the first wave of users, and then compare Kirin 990 based on word of mouth, and choose one of the three to buy.

I hope my suggestions are helpful to you, thank you!

(Warm reminder: This article only analyzes from the perspective of 5G network capabilities and does not constitute a purchase recommendation.

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