Samsung held a major event in South Korea in March, where they released the first looks and specifications of their upcoming Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus, alongside an assortment of other add-on’s. But the biggest part of the story isn’t the upcoming Galaxy S8, which hopefully is less explosive as its predecessor. The biggest news came from a number of wireless carriers – T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T – who used the announcement as an excuse to reveal their own advancements and upcoming network enhancements.
T-Mobile US is particularly excited by the powerful new Samsung model, as it will be the first smartphone that can tap into three separate sources – their own 4×4 multiple-input/multiple output antenna technology, overall carrier aggregation, and a 256 quadrature amplitude modulation transmission scheme – all simultaneously. While this will only be usable in the 300+ markets that currently have 4×4 MIMO available, the trio of technologies has reportedly been able to reach peak LTE speeds of 979 megabits a second. This new model of phone will also be the first Samsung product to be allow you to tao into future spectrums that are currently unlicensed. Doing so will increase network speeds exponentially, and further enhances coverage.
Meanwhile, Sprint users who get the new Samsung devices will be pleasantly surprised to find that they include support for their new high performance user equipment technology, or HPUE. Sprint claims that these advancements can extend coverage of the current 2.5. GHz-based TDD-LTE network by upwards of 30% – which can almost match the coverage provided by the current LTE network using the 1.9 GHz spectrum band. This is thanks to the HPUE upgrade inside the devices that allows for greater uplink connectivity support. The new power class 2 standard has already gained significant support from mobile companies China Mobile and SoftBank, chipset vendors like Qualcomm and MediaTek, and device makers such as HTC, Motorola, ZTE, LG, and Alcatel. Sprint CTO John Saw has even stated that, despite the increase in transmitting power due to the new HPUE technology, that devices using this advancement will not have to sacrifice significant battery life in the process – which is nuts.
AT&T, fresh off their new infrastructure deal with FirstNet, is more invested in using the new technology to allow users to easily utilize their upcoming 5G advancements. They announced their intention to coordinate with Samsung in the campaign in part because the new phones are “some of the first devices able to deliver ultra-fast wireless network speeds from AT&T when we launch the AT&T 5G Evolution markets.” Under the Network 3.0 Indigo Banner, AT&T has been steadily revealing their roll-out plans for the step forward into 5G, including plans for network densification, carrier aggregation, and license assisted access technologies. All in all, these promise network speeds of 400 Mbps over the course of the year, and are expected to even reach 1Gbps by December. Currently, AT&T are testing these features in Austin and Indianapolis, and both cities will receive dedicated outdoor and indoor testing to further examine the developments.
Source: T-Mobile, Sprint and AT&T unleash network enhancements with latest Samsung S8
