By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
At MWC in Barcelona this week Qualcomm released – as expected – a comprehensive lineup of Wi-Fi 8 platforms including the FastConnect 8800 SoC for phones, which is another huge leap forward in connectivity peformance and features. In fact, unless you’re a Wi-Fi aficionado you might have missed the new platform all together against the deafening backdrop MWC product releases. Ironically, the FastConnect 8800 is likely to impact the mobile connectivity experience more than any other product released at MWC this week.
If you’ve been following our reporting during the past few months you would know that Qualcomm was widely expected to announce Wi-Fi 8 SoC platforms this week at MWC and they certainly lived up to that promise – we just didn’t quite expect them to release all of six new platforms. Perhaps the most impressive (we’ll cover the network infrastructure SoCs separately) is the new FastConnect 8800 connectivity platform for phones. In brief, it’s another diminutive engineering marvel from Qualcomm.
With the FastConnect 8800, Qualcomm has seized the opportunity to introduce a slew of new performance-enhancing features. And although this is indeed a Wi-Fi 8-capable platform, being able to run Wi-Fi 8 may not even be its most important characteristic. As a world first the new chip comprises four state-of-the-art wireless technologies in one package: Wi-Fi 8, Bluetooth 7.0 HDT, Ultra-wideband, and Thread. Now add 4×4 Wi-Fi radio architecture, which also a world first for phones, Qualcomm says.
“While the Wi-Fi 8 standard itself doesn’t increase PHY rates compared to Wi-Fi 7, the FastConnect 8800 certainly will boost your experience – in fact, it will deliver up to three times the wireless gigabit range and twice the performance of our previous generation Wi-Fi 7 chip up to a peak data rate of more than 10 Gbps. We’ve also incorporated what we call Proximity AI which includes Wi-Fi ranging, Bluetooth Channel Sounding, and UWB to determine location. By delivering direction and distance and now leveraging GPS, you can easily locate your lost devices,” says Chano Gomez, Senior Director Product Management at Qualcomm.
Perhaps even more importantly, the new 4×4 architecture – which also includes integrated FEMs – will get you a big performance boost even before Wi-Fi 8 network services are widely available, Chano Gomez says. “There’s definitely a case for getting yourself a FastConnect 8800-powered phone early because you’ll get plenty of performance benefits even when connecting to legacy Wi-Fi 7 or Wi-Fi 6 networks. Wi-Fi 8 network services will then add a long list of ultra-reliability features including for example Extended Long Range (ELR),” Chano Gomez says.
Bluetooth 7.0 HDT – short for High Data Throughput – boosts Bluetooth data rates from 2 Mbps to 7.5 Mbps, which opens up for a number of useful applications, such as lossless audio and more. “With higher Bluetooth throughput, it will now be possible for example for smart glasses to use Bluetooth instead of Wi-Fi for connectivity. That’s important because Bluetooth HDT is more power efficient, and because smart glasses typically do not have much space to accommodate batteries,” he says.
Qualcomm says FastConnect 8800 is sampling this month with commercial products expected in late 2026. The company also says that the new platform will lend itself well to powering Wi-Fi connectivity for other device form factors, such as laptops, tablets, and even robotic devices. For more also watch the video below and go to this page for more details about Qualcomm Wi-Fi 8 solutions released at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week.
/Claus.
