Intel officially announces its 5G smartphone modem, first appearance expected in 2020

5G is slowly gaining momentum as both sides of the connection – network operators and phone manufacturers are working on their solutions to bring us those promised blazing fast speeds. To show that it’s making progress, Intel announced the Intel XMM 8160 5G modem. Qualcomm, Intel’s biggest competitor on the smartphone chip market, announced its own 5G modem more than 2 years ago, but we won’t see it in consumer products until early next year, when the first 5G capable smartphones are expected to hit the market.

It’s not surprising then that Intel’s roadmap isn’t any shorter. The company says that the new chips will be available to phone manufacturers in the second half of 2019 and expects that the first devices with them will be on the market early 2020. And that is only after Intel “accelerated the timing of this modem by pulling in the launch by more than a half-year".

So, what is Intel bringing to the table after taking so much longer to develop its 5G modem? The first thing that stands out is that Intel offers an all-in-one solution when it comes to modems. The XMM 8160 will take care not only for the 5G connectivity, but also older standards: 4G, 3G and even 2G. This, Intel adds with a sly smile, we imagine, differs from “...the two separate modems for 5G and legacy connectivity, as will be introduced in early competing 5G modems.”