Qualcomm is gearing up to reveal its next set of products at its Snapdragon Summit 2025, with rumors about its Snapdragon X2 chip heating up. But in a kickoff to the event today (September 23), the company brought up another next-gen technology — 6G connectivity
During the Vision Keynote presentation at its annual event, CEO Cristiano Amon revealed that Qualcomm will be ready to have the first set of devices with 6G connectivity “as early as 2026.”
That’s pre-commercial devices, by the way, which means test devices that will be able to show off 6G’s capabilities, so don’t start budgeting for your 6G phone now. Still, it’s an important milestone as industry leaders like Qualcomm turn their attention to the upcoming 6G wireless standard.
This would be the next step over 5G connectivity, which is now commonly seen in the best phones today. In the U.S., 5G launched commercially in 2019.
“We have been very busy working on the next generation of connectivity…which is 6G. Designed to be the connection between the cloud and Edge devices,” Amon said.
“The difference between 5G and 6G, besides increasing the speeds, increasing broadband, increasing the amount of data, it’s also a network that has intelligence to have perception and sensor data,” Amon added. “We’re going to have completely new use cases for this network of intelligence — connecting the edge and the cloud.
“We have been working on this for a while, and it’s sooner than you think. We are ready to have pre-commercial devices with 6G as early as 2028. We’re going to have context-aware intelligence at scale.”
Looking ahead at the future of devices, Amon noted that 6G would play a key role in the evolution of AI technology, with AI models becoming hybrid. This includes a combination of cloud and edge devices (like user interfaces, sensors, etc). According to Qualcomm, 6G will make this happen.
While Apple has already talked about working on 6G as far back as 2021, we’re now seeing how 6G will be implemented and when it will start to arrive. While Amon states the next-gen connectivity will be seen in “pre-commercial” devices first, we’re sure to see companies adopt 6G not long after — potentially before the end of this decade.
That’s still a while away, but seeing as how we could buy the first 5G phones six years ago, it’s now time for the next level of connectivity in 6G. We’re sure to see faster network speeds with higher amounts of data, but it’s also set to help bring more out of AI in devices.
Again, it’s still early days, and we won’t know the full extent of 6G until it arrives. But according to Qualcomm, we’ll start to see what it can achieve as soon as 2028. We’re on the ground at Snapdragon Summit 2025, so stay tuned for even more updates from Qualcomm (fingers crossed for next-gen chips).
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