On April 18th, Samsung Electronics officially unveiled its first 5G modem, the Exynos 5400, supporting two-way satellite communication. Samsung stated that this modem has been integrated into the Exynos processor versions of the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ smartphones and is expected to be featured in the upcoming next-generation Pixel devices, including the Google Pixel 9 series (Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, and Pixel 9 Pro Fold) to be released later this year.

The Exynos 5400 is Samsung’s first modem embedded with NB-IoT NTN and NR NTN network support. Thanks to this feature, smartphones and tablets using this modem can engage in two-way satellite communication, such as sending emergency distress messages, even in areas without cellular network coverage. Additionally, the Exynos 5400 supports both mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G network standards, with sub-6GHz supporting 4×4 MIMO and mmWave supporting 2×2 MIMO.

With support for dual connectivity in FR1 and FR2 frequency bands (3GPP Release 17), Exynos 5400 becomes Samsung’s fastest modem to date, offering a maximum download speed of up to 14.79Gbps. Samsung claims it as an industry-first solution that can aggregate five carriers (3 x 100MHz + 2 x 40MHz) and achieve a theoretical download speed of up to 11.2Gbps using 1,024 QAM modulation solely in the FR1 band. It is noted that FR1 is more efficient and reliable compared to the FR2 band.

Samsung mentioned that due to the utilization of Samsung’s 4nm EUV process technology for fabrication, the Exynos 5400 is the most energy-efficient 5G modem to date.

It is important to highlight that even though the Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ come with this modem, Samsung has not enabled the NTN connection feature in these devices, thus they do not support satellite communication at the moment. It is possible that Samsung will provide support for this feature through a system software update in the future.

Editor: Semiconductor Intelligence – Lin Zi