Qualcomm has unveiled a new smartphone chipset ahead of next week’s Mobile World Congress. The Snapdragon X75 5G Modem-RF System will start appearing in devices in the second half of the year. According to Qualcomm, the X75 enables stronger uplink and downlink connections and uses artificial intelligence to help keep signals connected in areas where coverage is weak, like elevators and parking garages. It’s also equipped for 3GPP’s 17 and 18 releases, which set standards for next-gen 5G. Release 18 sets the stage for 5G Advanced, for things like connected cars and smart cities (industrial IoT).

Last year’s X70 Snapdragon 8 Gen-2 chips are just coming to market in the OnePlus 11 5G and Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. Powered by Snapdragon X75, the company is touting Qualcomm Fixed Wireless Access Platform Gen 3 as “the world’s first fully integrated 5G Advanced-ready fixed wireless access (FWA) platform for 5G fixed Internet access with an aim to bridge the digital divide.”

Qualcomm FWA Gen 3 will help mobile operators offer cost-effective ways to deliver fiber-like Internet speeds wirelessly over 5G to rural, suburban and dense urban communities, helping to drive global adoption of FWA and making high-speed connectivity more widely available.

As for mobile connectivity, a new circuit board architecture is more compact and uses as much as 20 percent less power. The X75 more extensively supports 5G carrier aggregation, combining five-carrier sub-6GHz and 10-carrier mmWave. The converged transceiver allows the X75 to simultaneously send and receive data, which is more efficient than the traditional method of doing each separately.

“All of that should boil down to much faster connections, whether you’re sending or receiving data,” writes The Verge, explaining that “the X75 supports 5G uplink MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) and can send two signals at the same time using FDD (Frequency Division Duplex — a spectrum technology that sends and receives data all at once).”

Qualcomm breaks down the technical specs in detail in its corporate announcement.

In its quest to provide “a unique customer experience,” Qualcomm’s X75 supports what TechRepublic calls “smart network selection based on user context. For example, user context might figure out if you are in a hard-to-reach place like an elevator or a subway. From there, it decides which band to attach to your cellular network.”