Dec. 6, 2018, 6:02 a.m.
At the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau announced that his company would launch the first phone based on the new Snapdragon 855 processor slated for early 2019. This phone could be the OnePlus 7. At the conference, Lau announced a partnership with UK based telco EE for 5G. Previously, Lau had proclaimed that OnePlus was developing a 5G smartphone which it would launch in 2019. Considering that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 is the first widely available system on chip (SoC) with an integrated 5G modem, this could be the very same device. That being said, Samsung’s senior VP for mobile, Justin Denison yesterday announced that Samsung was working with Qualcomm and Verizon to launch the first 5G smartphone in the US. Since the Snapdragon 855 is being made available in two stacks — one with the X50 modem for 5G and X24 modem with 4G — chances are that OnePlus could launch a 4G-based Snapdragon 855 phone for markets like India and for developed markets it could deploy the X50 modem-based model.
The Snapdragon 855 will be the mobile SoC for choice for most flagship smartphones in 2019. Apart from companies like Huawei and Apple which make their own custom SoCs, most smartphone OEMs will be leaning on Qualcomm’s support with the Snapdragon 855. Even for 5G deployments, as this chip is the first mainstream modem packaged inside a SoC — it will be the go-to solution.