xelrre

I think these all used the older ARMv7 Exynos chips, before modems became standard in the SoC. Everything they've shipped with an ARMv8 has an onboard modem.

Totally. At the same time, Samsung has made it clear they aren't really interested in producing SoCs without built in modems any more.

Historically, that was trueish thanks to CDMA in the usa, but it's significantly less true now that the CDMA networks are dying.

For instance, the only band an S20 is missing that's commonly found in the US is 66.

https://www.deviceranks.com/en/phone/bands/16582/samsung-gal...

These days it's purely a patent licensing agreement. Samsung doesn't sell Exynos modems (and thus Exynos SoCs) in the US or China (historically markets with lots of CDMA), and Qualcomm doesn't hassle them about the rest of the world.

Too bad this will never ship in a US-bound product. Samsung is so terrified of Qualcomm's patent library that their US destined products all use Qualcomm SoCs instead of Exynos.