The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra is one of the first smartphones to support WiFi 6E.
This is going to allow Galaxy S21 Ultra customers to stream and download much faster than ever before. Of course, you will need a WiFi 6E-compatible router for WiFi 6E to work. But this does mean that the Galaxy S21 Ultra is indeed future-proof, at least for a few more years.
The Galaxy S21 and S21+ are not compatible with WiFi 6E, only the Galaxy S21 Ultra.
It may not be a feature that most people looking to buy a Galaxy S21 Ultra is looking for, but it is nice to have it included. And it wouldn’t be too crazy to expect most other Android smartphones released in 2021 to have support for WiFi 6E as well.
What is WiFi 6E?
Basically, WiFi 6E runs on the 6GHz band. Which is going to provide for much faster speeds, compared to WiFi 6 and even WiFi 5. Both of which run on the 5GHz band.
WiFi 6E will work similarly to WiFi 6 (even though it runs on the 5GHz band), because it offers additional non-overlapping channels. WiFi 6E allows for “14 additional 80MHz channels and seven additional 160MHz channels.”The channels won’t overlap with each other, and that will help with congestion, particularly in a busy area.
Just how fast can WiFi 6E be? It can be as fast as 9.6Gbps. But keep in mind that is a theoretical speed, and you will probably never see that max speed.
There are plenty of routers that support WiFi 6E, with many of them announced earlier this week at CES 2021. Depending on your ISP speeds, you may not need a WiFi 6E router right away, though if you are on a gigabit plan, then it’s likely a good idea to check one out.