It is only Tuesday, but it has already been a busy week for Qualcomm. The company is currently hosting its 4G/5G Summit in Hong Kong, and it is the latter of those two mobile standards that has taken much of the early focus. To that end, Qualcomm has announced its first-ever 5G compatible modem, the X50, which is designed for use in smartphones and tablets. 

According to Qualcomm, the X50 can support download speeds of up to 5 Gbps by operating in the 28 GHz millimetre wave, which far outperforms the peak 50 Mbps speeds afforded to 4G/LTE devices at the moment. This is delivered by the X50 leveraging the 800 MHz bandwidth, along with intelligent MIMO antenna use to effectively improve the penetration range of such a high frequency. 

As for when we'll be able to sample 5 Gbps download speeds, Qualcomm has not fully disclosed a release date for the X50 in mobile devices. The company has, however, told Engadget that X50-sporting smartphones could reach consumers within the first half of 2018. Hopefully you can hold out that long.  

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