LG hits 60Mb/sec on a smartphone

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 9 Dec 2008 at 15:44

LG has begun testing the world's first 3GPP Long Term Evolution chip, which could pave the way to 100Mb/sec download and 50Mb/sec upload speeds in smartphones.

The company says it tested the chip on a Windows Mobile device at its research labs in Korea. Although the chip was trialled in optimum conditions, LG admits the chip only managed to hit a top download speed of 60Mb/sec and an upload speed of 20Mb/sec.

Though some way below the theoretical maximum, the speeds still represents a staggering increase on the current 7.6Mb/sec top speed currently available in Britain.

Beyond reporting the results of its experimentation, LG also took a few minutes to indulge a spot of crystal-ball gazing, predicting the day when we're all downloading 700MB files in less than a minute and streaming four HD movies simultaneously without any buffering.

"Now that LG has developed and tested the first 4G handset modem, a commercially viable LTE handset is on the horizon," says Dr Woo Hyun Paik, CTO of LG Electronics. "This latest breakthrough gives us a strong technology advantage that we will use to bolster our industry leadership."

While the potential is impressive, the technology will only take off if network providers bite the bullet and upgrade their existing infrastructure to support it. LG claims its chip could lower this cost for vendors, as it's built on the existing WCDMA standard.

However, in a recent interview with PC Pro, Ericsson suggested the rush to 4G may yet prove premature, with current HSPA technologies capable of yielding speeds up to 80Mb/sec.