Tired of 5G? Qualcomm says that 6g will be there before the end of the world

The CEO of Qualcomm Cristiano Amon told the assembly crowd at its Snapdragon summit in Maui, Hawaii (full disclosure: travel and accommodation were paid by Qualcomm, and Gizmodo has guaranteed coverage as a condition for acceptance of the trip), that the world can define its watch and erase its calendar for the next generation of wireless connectivity. You will only have to wait a while. Currently, 5G and 4G LTE are the norm around the world. 6G could allow faster internet speeds, and the first “pre-commercial devices” with the standard will be there in three years. For so many reasons, I don’t have much to hope for at that time.

I do not like to consider the ramifications of 2028. There will be a new series of presidential elections (or perhaps not, according to the authoritarian constraints of the American commander in chief) which can exacerbate the political tensions of today. Until then, the Sam Altman still overpromised by Openai could push AG – “artificial general intelligence” – in our faces (other large CEOs of technology are much more doubtful). Today’s technological environment is so confused and so tenuous that the idea of ​​having a sure idea of ​​the next generation of wireless data seems so much more uncertain. Qualcomm, of course, imagine 6g will have something – everything – to do with AI.

Because of course, it’s. Qualcomm has chips in many different products, with the majority of them in Android phones. It offers XR glasses, including the next Android XR XREAL “Project Aura” and the Meta Ray-Ban intelligent glasses. Its chips are in the Pixel 4 watch. And if all these devices grow AI more and more for everything you do, then Qualcomm needs to facilitate this. According to Amon, the smartphone will just be a hot brick in your pocket used to communicate all this quality of agentic AI to the devices that you stick on all parts of your body.

The 6G Newfangled should send even more data to your devices, which means faster download and download speeds. To achieve this, Qualcomm must make new modems. Amon said that the company would need a brand new memory architecture and better UNP (neural treatment units) which can really do something rather than working in the background on translation and transcription tasks. And then comes the big question: will there be a new AI feature that is worth getting out of bed? The reason why people will buy a new pair of AR glasses or a new cool intelligent ring for specific features? Based on what we saw from AI-Forward devices like Pixel 10, most users can do without.

The energy necessary to create a more advanced AI will continue to develop if companies like Openai and Google remain on this path. The $ 100 billion partnership in NVIDIA recently announced with OPENAI, new cloud systems from 2026 (requiring still unknown electric power levels to execute everything). When Amon positions 6G if necessary for the next stage of AI development while centering the possible version for 2028, or probably beyond, it gives the impression that there could be a bottleneck in connectivity or processing power which will bother this new era of computer science.

“The amount of data will eclipse the existence of models,” said Amon.

After talking with Qualcomm, it is clear that the company does its best to wait impatiently. He cannot know the case of use of 6G, even if the presence of AI obliges to be a more substantial update compared to the 5G standard. It is impossible to develop technology when we really don’t know what IA is shaped – or technology in general – will take three years. Media threshing always exceeds the physical capacities of our gadgets. A devices ready for consumers with 6G will approach 2030, at least according to the flea manufacturer.

Companies like Microsoft tell us the age of agentic AI – artificial intelligence systems that work in tandem to perform complex tasks – is already there. The age of AR glasses seems to be imminent with the meta-ray-ban screen on the horizon. What will we do while waiting? Honestly, I cannot envisage 2028. Without subscribing to a feeling of self -satisfied misfortune – where I can speak on the side of my mouth and claim that “the world will probably end before 2028” – I honestly believe that our current technological brain bubble inevitably goes. And in any case, by 2028, 6g will be the least of our concerns.