Despite the delays that the deployment of 5G is suffering, most high-end mobiles launched this year have 5G, since Qualcomm forces the Snapdragon X55 to be installed externally to the SoC. This obligation, however, causes the battery consumption to increase, as confirmed by Redmi, the cheap brand of Xiaomi.
This was stated by Lu Weibing , the person in charge of Redmi in China. In a post published on Weibo, he highlighted the difference in power consumption between Qualcomm’s 800 and 700 series, in addition to the difference in consumption between 4G and 5G mobiles.
20% consumption between high and medium range
So, first of all, we found that a processor like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 would consume 20% more power than the Snapdragon 730 or 765G. This implies a dangerous change, since high-end processors were normally the most energy efficient thanks to having more power and performing tasks in the shortest possible time. This was mainly due to the fact that the mid-range processors were made with nodes of more nanometers, where for example the flagship was 10 nm, but the mid-range was 14 nm.
That has changed in recent months, where the Snapdragon 730 is 8nm, and the 765G is 7nm, although in the latter case we have that the 865 has a more refined process and greater optimization.
Unfortunately, this implies that a mobile with a 765G is going to consume less battery than one with the 865, and that can make someone go for the “mid-range” chip, which is very powerful and still very capable. Weibing claims that in the Redmi K30 Pro they have had to design a double-layer motherboard like the ones used by high-end Samsungs or iPhones in order to fit a 4,700 mAh battery.
Another 20% of consumption between 4G and 5G
And also, we must add the fact that a mobile with 5G consumes 20% more energy than a 4G mobile . And not only do we talk about when 5G connectivity is being used, but because of how it affirms it, the fact that the modem is outside the SoC (as we can see in the following image) instead of inside as it was other years ago that consumption energetic is triggered. Thus, we have that for a mobile with 5G to have the same autonomy as one with 4G, assuming that both have the same chip, it must have a 4,800 mAh battery compared to one of 4,000 in the 4G mobile.
This is why the high-end mobiles that have been launched on the market in recent weeks have such large batteries , as they seek to offset the huge increase in consumption. Therefore, if you want to have the best of both worlds, having 5G and good autonomy, you may be worth waiting for next year when Qualcomm decides to include the modem in the SoC, in addition to the 5G PowerSave that they announced last year.
4G also started consuming more energy than 4G, but after several generations and optimizations, its energy consumption was reduced to a minimum. The same will happen with 5G in the coming years. And the rush for 5G has been reduced due to the slowdown in investment by operators around the world, where the auction and the deployment of this new connectivity has been delayed.
Source> Android Authority
