What Apple needs is not just an iPhone 5G but another product that is even more important.
Over the past few days, Apple has been the technology world because of reconciliation with Qualcomm, pledging to stop all hearings between the two sides globally. Not only have they forsaken a costly legal battle, they have been pursuing for many years, not only to give up the claim for compensation if the lawsuit can reach tens of billions of dollars, Apple may also have to repay nearly 6 billion. USD license fee for Qualcomm along with a $ 9 royalty per new iPhone sold.
Why is Apple, a company that is famous for its tough negotiations with its partners, suddenly appear so vulnerable to Qualcomm? The answer is clear to most people, Apple needs Qualcomm's 5G modem chip for its iPhone by 2020, when they lost faith in Intel, their current modem provider.
In theory, compared with 4G network technology, 5G has many outstanding advantages, among them is the connection speed 10 times faster, the network capacity is 1,000 times, the latency is almost 0. , lower energy consumption, can connect millions of devices at the same time in a space with high equipment density
But what are the real benefits to Apple's iPhone?
Watch movies, surf the web, smoother? Live stream or call FaceTime higher resolution? Or playing games without delay even while sitting in a high-speed car? Those advantages are also quite interesting, but not too superior to current technology. That means adding 5G to the iPhone will not become a big enough reason to convince users to upgrade to the new iPhone. If so, Apple will never spend such a huge amount of money to put 5G on iPhone 2020.
So does Apple need 5G because their other competitors, such as Huawei or Samsung, have equipped that technology on their smartphones? Apple has never been afraid to go after rivals in networking technology. They have been behind in 3G, 4G without much impact on their sales. This is probably not very different from 5G when their competitors themselves have not shown any important applications that need the technology.
But maybe Apple does
Earlier this past March, Ming-Chi Kuo, the most reliable analyst on Apple products, released a prediction in 2020, Apple will release AR augmented reality glasses. In its first appearance, the rumored product will long serve as an accessory for the iPhone.
This means that this AR glass will act as a display device - an external screen with an extremely large viewing angle in front of the user. Meanwhile, processing heavy tasks, image extraction, data connection and object positioning in the surrounding environment will be reserved for processors on the iPhone.
This approach of Apple is different from Microsoft's HoloLens glasses when HoloLens itself is a mobile computer to handle the image and data tasks needed. This approach of Apple will help the glass is light and elegant, according to its traditional design philosophy, instead of a large, heavy glasses like HoloLens.
However, this approach will encounter a problem that is data connectivity. Not only that, with Apple's design, they will almost certainly have to use a wireless connection, instead of needing a cable to transfer data. Meanwhile, the augmented reality content is so large that it will be hard to display consistently on the current wireless network connection. This is the problem iPhone 5G can solve in the future.
How Apple needs 5G
The advantages of connection speed, data transfer bandwidth, extremely low signal latency and high security of 5G will allow devices to transfer files of large capacity directly to each other (D2D Device-to-Device), at almost instant speed.
It may sound strange, but the technology for direct file and data transfer between devices has been widely used by Apple. That's the famous AirDrop feature, or Bluetooth connectivity, for AirPods to connect quickly and stably to other Apple devices. The connection between the iPhone and the AR glass will be similar, but it is dozens of times faster than Wifi (the maximum speed of ac standard Wifi is about 1,730Mb / s, and the maximum speed of 5G can be reached) to 10Gb / s).
Another factor that makes the 5G connection becomes essential for the development of AR and VR content or IoT devices is the ability to consume energy more efficiently. This will be especially important for creating a battery-operated AR glass but still ensuring a neat, elegant design - a characteristic of Apple products.