In a press release on its official blog, Samsung announced its Cat.18 6CA (Carrier aggregation) LTE modem technology that will allow it to access up to six LTE bands at once.
The current Galaxy S8 models that have Samsung’s Exynos 9 8895 processor have 5CA LTE support, which means they can “only” connect to five LTE bands at once, with theoretical download speed up to “just” 1.0 Gbps. Of course, these are the top speeds that are possible with this technology; in the real world, the download speeds using these modems are much slower.
If this is integrated in the Samsung Galaxy S9 next year, the smartphone could offer higher LTE speeds than your home fibre connection as well, and may be able to download a full-HD movie in just 10 seconds.
The 6CA-supported LTE modem achieves up to 20 percent improvement in maximum downlink speed allowing users to make buffer-less video calls and mobile live-broadcasting. Earlier this year, Samsung presented the its Cat.16 LTE modem with 1 Gigabit (Gb) downlink speed and the first 5CA support in the Samsung Exynos 9 Series (8895) SoC that is integrated into the Galaxy S8 series.
“With the increase of high-quality online content services, the demand for high-performance LTE modems continue to rise as well. The 1.2Gbps maximum downlink speed with 6CA support highlights Samsung’s leading design capabilities and well-positions Samsung for the upcoming 5G era,” said Woonhaing Hur, Vice President of System LSI Protocol Development at Samsung Electronics in a statement.
Credit: Samsung (newsroom), Android Authority
