Qualcomm's first Wi-Fi 6E chips are aimed at phones and routers

[nanoguy]

The big picture: The new Wi-Fi 6E standard has opened up 1,200 MHz of spectrum real estate for Wi-Fi devices which will offer more channels and increased transfer speeds. Qualcomm hopes its latest chips will quickly permeate a wide range of smartphones and wireless routers, which will solve some of the biggest frustrations related to Wi-Fi speed, latency, and reliability.

Qualcomm has announced its FastConnect 6900 and FastConnect 6700 chips that support the latest Wi-Fi 6E standard, which is essentially the solution that we've been waiting for to deal with overcrowded airwaves and the overall reliability of Wi-Fi connectivity. The 'E' stands for "extended," as the new standard adds the 6 Ghz spectrum into the mix.

These chips are available for manufacturer sampling and will most likely go into high-end smartphones to be released in the second half of this year and in early 2021.

Qualcomm says the two FastConnect chips can reach theoretical speeds of up to 3Gbps for the FastConnect 6700 and up to 3.6Gbps for the FastConnect 6900 when using 160 MHz wide channels. The company is also touting "VR-class" latency as well as more advanced Bluetooth features such as a new class of Bluetooth Low Energy Audio.

There's a probability Android phone manufacturers will wait until Wi-Fi 6E capabilities are baked into Qualcomm's Snapdragon SoCs before jumping into the fold, while Qualcomm is hoping companies will adopt the newer FastConnect chips sooner to differentiate their products, which would lead to a faster adoption of the new standard.

Qualcomm also announced four new chips for routers under the Networking Pro brand that will support anywhere from six to sixteen concurrent Wi-Fi streams and maximum theoretical speeds ranging from 5.4 Gbps to 10.8 Gbps.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/85418-qualcomm-first-wi-fi-6e-chips-aimed-phones.html

 

[Irata]

Could these also be used for PC (desktop + laptop) Wifi ?

 

[rrwards]

Could these also be used for PC (desktop + laptop) Wifi ?

Likely they will be added to the mini PCIe cards in the next few months and then we'll see them in laptops/desktop offerings.

 

[Jeff Schmidt]

This is why you wait for the standards and companies are kind of greedy. They changed wifi for consumers to be easier to understand Wifi 1-whatever. Now with wifi 6 stuff out we will have wifi 6e. Next year what is it going to be wifi 6m or something else. And uneducated consumers will be confused and annoyed.

But besides that I can't wait to get 6ghz and see how it is. Probably pretty similar to 5ghz in speed and distance. Since the made up or best case numbers they always show and no one will ever get or are never correct.

Still wish they'd update the protocal so it used multiple bands at the same time. Like 6hz for upstream/downstream then 5.4ghz for upstream/downstream. But I imagine the heat from the chips would be too much.

 

[nismo91]

This is why you wait for the standards and companies are kind of greedy. They changed wifi for consumers to be easier to understand Wifi 1-whatever. Now with wifi 6 stuff out we will have wifi 6e. Next year what is it going to be wifi 6m or something else. And uneducated consumers will be confused and annoyed.

But besides that I can't wait to get 6ghz and see how it is. Probably pretty similar to 5ghz in speed and distance. Since the made up or best case numbers they always show and no one will ever get or are never correct.

Still wish they'd update the protocal so it used multiple bands at the same time. Like 6hz for upstream/downstream then 5.4ghz for upstream/downstream. But I imagine the heat from the chips would be too much.

But besides that I can't wait to get 6ghz and see how it is. Probably pretty similar to 5ghz in speed and distance. Since the made up or best case numbers they always show and no one will ever get or are never correct.

gotta agree with you here. I learnt this the hard way a decade ago when I went for wifi N (which is wifi 4). there was "draft-N speed", 150mbps N speed, 300mbps N speed with 40mhz band, 600mbps N speed with 5.0ghz, etc. except, at that time most of the pre-installed wifi on laptops and smartphones are only capable of 150mbps at most. only high-end devices came with 5.0ghz wifi N compatible adapter, which my laptop did. but then again it wasn't listed in the laptop description, it just said wifi BGAN compatible.

so I waited for years to get wifi AC (wifi 5). when I got it last year I was happy because I can now run both 2.4ghz band and 5.0ghz band simultaneously with different SSID, and have them on the same network (I.e. my printer is connected to the 2.4ghz but my phone is on 5.0ghz yet both can communicate perfectly). until about few months ago I noticed that my 2.4ghz SSID is having intermittent problems where devices connected to it would be "kicked" yet the SSID is still transmitting. no problems at all for the 5.0ghz so I did some digging:

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Nighthawk-WiFi-Routers/2-4Ghz-stops-working-5Ghz-fine/td-p/1452075

in short, this problem is not limited to some routers, but appears to be affecting many models from different brand. one of the solutions so far is to limit the 2.4ghz wifi n (wifi 4) to only use 20mhz bandwidth which theoretically makes them 150mbps max. I tried this and haven't had any major issues for few days now. of course that means I do not run the router at its max speed, but that's better than having to reboot the router twice a day!

can't believe after more than 10 years some manufacturers are still struggling to keep their devices running old wifi n (wifi 4) technology at maximum speed. so no I couldn't care less about wifi 6. at least for the next 5 years.