Global research organization Gartner released the latest report, pointing out that global terminal shipments are expected to stop falling and rebound in 2020. Driven by the demand for 5G mobile phones, the global smartphone market is expected to grow by 3% this year, and 5G mobile phone sales are expected to surpass 4G mobile phones within one year. Sales.

Obviously, in the foreseeable future, 4G mobile phones will gradually come to an end. Replaced by 5G mobile phones, will gradually advance from the high-end market to the mid-end or even entry-level and become the mainstream.

5G mobile phones involve the technological upgrading of the entire industry chain. What is the difference between it and 4G mobile phones? Which technologies will play a key role in the popularization of 5G mobile phones? Let's talk about the three key technologies behind 5G mobile phones: motherboard, antenna and heat dissipation.

The "foundation" of 5G mobile phones: SLP technology

Disassemble a 4G mobile phone, you will find that the components contained on the PCB board have almost reached the limit. How to maintain the thickness and weight of the fuselage on the basis of more components in a 5G mobile phone, SLP technology plays a key role.

What is SLP? SLP stands for Substrate-like PCB. Through advanced soldering process, multi-layer PCB boards can be connected to each other, thereby changing the motherboard from "2D to 3D", making full use of the space of the body. iPhone X, XS The multi-layer motherboard technology used in the series and 11 Pro series benefited from the SLP process.

Why use SLP? According to the estimation of the radio frequency industry giant Skyworks, the radio frequency front-end parts of 5G mobile phones will increase significantly, the number of filters will increase from 40 to 70, and other radio frequency devices such as antennas, PAs, radio frequency switches, LNAs, etc. will almost double.

The SLP process not only makes better use of the three-dimensional space inside the fuselage, but also makes the components of the PCB board more "compact", that is, to further reduce the line width and line spacing, so as to put more 5G components. The minimum line width/line spacing of Anylayer HDI used in the past is about 40μm, while the current SLP is already less than 30/30 ?m. It is understood that the SLP process used in the new iPhone this year will be further reduced to 25 um/30 um.

The space release brought by SLP technology is quite obvious. Take the iPhone as an example. After the introduction of SLP technology in iPhone X, the volume of the same number of components has been reduced to 70% of the original volume, bringing more battery space. However, the Android camp has not yet widely introduced SLP technology, and it is expected that SLP technology will gradually become the mainstream in the flagship 5G mobile phones in 2020.