A6 baseband vs Samsung

[vjlenin]

Hi all,

I am new here. I have a minor query about Apple processor and Samsung S3 processor. Within iPhone 5, we have a baseband made by Qualcomm, which is MDM 9615. Also, the A6 chip is manufactured by samsung. So in essence, the chip has nothing to do with baseband. they are separate.

if that is the case, then why does Samsung have Qualcomm snapdragon on S3 in US LTE markets? Can't they have the exynos processor and qualcomm's baseband chip, thereby actually having a quadcore LTE phone?

I heard all US smartphone makers who provide LTE opt for snapdragon. Is there any particular reason for this other than the fact that qualcomm is the leader in LTE?

 

[footballrunner800]

I believe Qualcomm having a lot of patents to LTE is a main contributor

 

[Aikouka]

if that is the case, then why does Samsung have Qualcomm snapdragon on S3 in US LTE markets? Can't they have the exynos processor and qualcomm's baseband chip, thereby actually having a quadcore LTE phone?

The answer is simply in timing. The Galaxy S3 came out prior to the iPhone 5, and it came out when using the Qualcomm MDM9615 simply wasn't an option. If I remember correctly, the 9615 doesn't require being used with a Qualcomm SoC (I believe that was called "SoC Fusion") to make things easier.

This Anandtech article from the iPhone 4S days probably explains things a bit better...

Today, Qualcomm is a leading provider of LTE baseband silicon and unfortunately they don't ship any baseband hardware that supports both LTE and voice (over 1x/WCDMA) without extra silicon. In order to support both you need to be using something Qualcomm calls SoC Fusion. By leveraging a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC in combination with Qualcomm's MDM9600 LTE modem you can deliver both voice and LTE data. Otherwise the MDM9600 is only good for data, which is admittedly useful in things like USB modems or MiFis.