A good question recently: What is the 5G benchmark?

Count the 5G mobile phones used by the author, such as Xiaomi 9 Pro 5G, Samsung Note10+5G, etc. In some places with good signal coverage, downloading movies, music, surfing the Internet and other operations are really fast. Yes, these phones do support 5G and have fast internet speeds. Does that mean they are 5G benchmark phones? This part may be expanded.

First of all, we should make it clear that 5G does not just bring faster network speed, but there will be a large number of new scenario applications that must rely on 5G support in the future. These applications need not only 5G network speed, but also higher and higher requirements for the hardware of the mobile phone itself. In fact, it is easy to understand that a good horse must be equipped with a saddle, and 5G mobile phones must have flagship hardware performance, otherwise performance bottlenecks will occur. This @ Glory Old Xiong also mentioned on his microblog a few days ago that he thought: "Kirin 990 launched the 5G SoC flagship chip, rather than testing the water with the mid end SoC chip first. This is just like the engine in the automotive industry, which is crucial, otherwise it is not just a small horse pulling a big car?"

Here, Glory Old Bear puts forward higher requirements for 5G benchmark - it must be equipped with 5G SoC flagship chip. In the mobile phone industry, SoC refers to the main chip of the mobile phone, which integrates CPU GPU、 Image processing, video encoding and decoding and other functions; Mobile phone external communication（ For example, 4G, 5G ）The most important part is called "baseband". It is of course the best to integrate all these functions into one SoC chip, and the efficiency, performance, power consumption, etc. will reach the best state. This is not controversial in the 3G and 4G era. Everyone has done so, but in the 5G era, there has been differentiation. So far, except Glory V30 series and Huawei Mate 30 series, all other 5G mobile phones have adopted the way of external baseband chips.

The reason for this phenomenon is simple, because the design and production of SoC chips for mobile phones in the 5G era are much more difficult and costly than those in the 3G and 4G era. This is reflected in two aspects. First, the 5G baseband chip is too complex and needs more advanced manufacturing technology, because more functions need to be integrated to support more frequency bands and functions. If you want to support the full SA/NSA dual mode 5G, at least 7nm process is required; Second, it will be more difficult to integrate the 5G baseband into the mobile phone SoC, because the mobile phone SoC is already very complex, and also integrates the 2G/3G/4G baseband. Now it is even more difficult to add a more complex 5G baseband.

Because of these difficulties, the only commercially available chip in the world that meets the standards of "flagship, dual-mode 5G, and full integration" is the Kirin 990 5G, which uses the 7nm+EUV process process that is more advanced than the 7nm process, and the number of internally integrated transistors has reached a staggering 10.3 billion!

On the other hand, Qualcomm, which is widely sought after by mobile phone manufacturers, has recently released its second wave of 5G mobile phone solutions. After careful observation, we can see that Qualcomm's flagship solution is still an external 5G baseband, while what really integrates the 5G baseband into the mobile phone's main chip is a low-end Snapdragon 765G. How to understand this product idea? It can only be said that Qualcomm either flinches or wants to save costs. After all, the cost and risk of full integration of low-grade chips are lower.

But for consumers, we don't buy chips but mobile phones. What problems should we consider? I want to learn something new from the past experience. If you want to buy a phone with Qualcomm's flagship solution, you can only tolerate the external baseband（ Similar to the 3299 yuan glory V30 standard version, but Qualcomm is 4-6 months late ）； If you buy a Snapdragon 765G mobile phone, you may not be satisfied with its performance, but you may also encounter the high price slaughter of some manufacturers. After all, many mobile phone manufacturers like to launch low configuration and high price phones, which are always urine.

In fact, these routines can be solved by the definition of 5G benchmark by Glory Old Bear, that is, using 5G SoC flagship chip. However, there are too many circles and routines!

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