LAS VEGAS—Qualcomm announced that its RF front-end components will be going into phones from five different manufacturers, making it likely that all five makers' phones will support T-Mobile's new 600MHz Band 71 network this year.

The announcement covered Google, HTC, LG, Samsung, and Sony, and it's about the antenna tuners, power amplifiers, and filters in those phones. Those kinds of components help control which frequency bands a phone supports, and thus its carriers and coverage. Qualcomm's press release notes specifically its lineup of Band 71 equipment.

T-Mobile's Band 71, which is currently being rolled out, is low-frequency spectrum the carrier will be using both to cover rural areas with 4G LTE and to establish a nationwide 5G network. At the moment, only two phones, the LG V30 and Samsung Galaxy S8 Active, support Band 71.

Qualcomm's components will also make it more likely those phones will support 4x4 MIMO, an antenna arrangement that's crucial to getting the best speeds and coverage, Christian Block, SVP and general manager of Qualcomm's RF Front End business said.

"We are truly set for massive MIMO and also for coexistence, not only for cellular 4x4 but also coexistence with Wi-Fi," he said.

Antennas, tuners, and filters will become even more important as phone makers try to add 5G into devices that already support 4G, 3G, 2G, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and NFC. When it launched its 5G reference phone, Qualcomm showed off a tiny diversity antenna that could help capture 5G signals without making phones larger.

"Consumers around the globe demand powerful signal strength, even in the most difficult conditions. Samsung can deliver this thanks to Qualcomm Technologies' end-to-end integrated modem and RF offerings," Yeonjeong Kim, vice president of R&D, Samsung's Mobile Communications Business said in a press release.

According to our testing done by Cellular Insights for PCMag, Qualcomm devices are still ahead of Intel-based phones when it comes to capturing 4G LTE signals, although the gap has narrowed somewhat from last year.

Because Qualcomm now has integrated its modem and RF front-end businesses, "we have these technologies where we can really form the front end in a new way, use the same antenna in a different way, and do multicarrier aggregation in a different way" than others do, Block said.

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