Samsung unveils the Exynos Modem 5100, featuring support for 5G as well as 4G, 3G, and 2G, with speeds up to 6Gbps when connected to millimeter wave towers
Jeremy Horwitz / VentureBeat :
Context & Ripple Effects
Samsung's modem line has been climbing steadily: the Exynos 9 8895 shipped an integrated LTE modem at 1 Gbps downlink back in early 2017, and the Exynos Modem 5100 now jumps to a standalone part that speaks 5G alongside 4G, 3G, and 2G, claiming up to 6 Gbps on millimeter-wave networks.
That claim sets the spec bar a year before Huawei answers with the Kirin 990 5G's integrated 5G at 2.3 Gbps, and well before T-Mobile's 3.3 Gbps nationwide rollout shows what real-world networks can actually deliver to Galaxy devices.
First-order effects
- Samsung gains a merchant 5G modem it can sell to handset makers and drop into its own flagships, with the 6 Gbps millimeter-wave figure becoming the headline number competitors must match or beat.
- Phone makers designing 2019 flagships get a multi-generation fallback path — the 5100 still negotiates 4G, 3G, and 2G — reducing the risk of betting a launch on immature 5G coverage.
Second-order effects
- Huawei's response is architectural rather than just faster: the Kirin 990 5G integrates 5G directly into the chipset, pressuring Samsung to follow suit rather than keep shipping discrete modems.
- Carrier marketing shifts to device-gated speed tiers, as seen when T-Mobile's ultrafast 5G launched exclusively for Galaxy S23 users before widening — giving Samsung's modem roadmap direct leverage over how operators stage their rollouts.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the modem stops being a separate purchase decision and dissolves into the SoC — Samsung's own later Exynos 1080 pairs a 5 nm CPU with sub-6GHz and mmWave on one die — making baseband integration the new battleground for flagship silicon.
- Modem capability increasingly dictates which markets a phone can sell into, since mmWave versus sub-6GHz support determines whether a device can hit peak speeds on any given carrier's network.
The trend: Cellular modems are moving from discrete add-on chips to integrated 5G silicon inside flagship SoCs, with each vendor's peak-speed claims racing ahead of the networks built to deliver them.