The Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge will reportedly receive an update soon in Korea, allowing them to achieve far greater transfer speeds.
Samsung is gearing up to release a software update for its latest flagship smartphones, enabling the blazing-fast LTE-X. The update will bring Multipath Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) for simultaneous LTE and Wi-Fi network transmission. Allowing a connection to use multiple paths aims to maximize the effective use of resources.
According to a new report from Naver (translated), Samsung is getting ready to release this firmware update for its Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge in Korea within the next two weeks.
Enabling LTE-X with Multipath TCP would allow the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge to achieve impressive transfer speeds of up to 1.17 Gbps, far greater than conventional LTE networks.
To achieve this theoretical speed of 1.17 Gbps, Multipath TCP leverages both the 802.11ac Wi-Fi network and the 300 Mbps Cat. 6 LTE network, combining them to use their resources simultaneously. The actual speeds with real-life usage wouldn't go all the way up to 1.17 Gbps, but will likely range between 300 and 400 Mbps, Naver notes. Even so, compared to conventional LTE, Multipath TCP would be four times faster at 300 - 400 Mbps.
As Naver points out, 1GB of data would take only 8.5 seconds to download. So far, CA is the fastest three-band communications technology that is commercially available, and it takes 28 seconds to download 1GB of data. Consequently, Multipath TCP is not only four times faster than conventional LTE, but also three times faster than the three-band CA.
Carriers in Korea are reportedly gearing up to support LTE-X as well, and should be on board by the time Samsung enables this technology on its Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge with the upcoming update.
Samsung made no mention of whether it will push a similar update in other markets as well, but carrier support for LTE-X and Multipath TCP is scarce in other regions. In other words, only Korean versions of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge will likely get the treat now, but it's nonetheless a notable milestone.
