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Communications Hardware

Qualcomm: 5G Android Flagship Phones Will Storm the 2019 Holidays (cnet.com) 47

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Get ready for lots of 5G phones in time for the holidays next year. From a report: The first devices for the fast, next-generation network will hit the market in early 2019. Samsung, for one, said it will have a phone for Verizon, AT&T and other networks in the first half of the year. By the holidays next year, every flagship handset -- at least when it comes to those running Google's Android software and using Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor -- will tap into 5G, said Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon. "When we get to exactly this time of year one year from now ... we will see every [handset maker] on the Android ecosystem, their flagship across all US carriers will be a 5G device," he told CNET in an interview Tuesday at Qualcomm's Snapdragon Technology Summit in Hawaii. "Every Android vendor is working on 5G right now."
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Qualcomm: 5G Android Flagship Phones Will Storm the 2019 Holidays More

Qualcomm: 5G Android Flagship Phones Will Storm the 2019 Holidays

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  • iPhone owners sure do appreciate you all beta testing spotty 5G networks for year or so before an iPhone starts to include them...

    I wasn't planning to get a new phone until 2020 anyway so I really appreciate the rest of you spending time, money and sanity to ensure my experience with 5G will be delightful later on.

    • Re:Thanks for beta testing everyone! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @11:30AM (#57753122)

      That's kinda where I'm at with my thinking. 5G support may storm the holiday season, but without the corresponding infrastructure upgrades in your area, it won't do you any good. Given that our local 4G connections didn't actually come with 4G speeds until somewhat recently, I'm not exactly holding my breath for 5G speeds anytime in the next few years in my area.

      And, frankly, even if they were to come soon, I'd be hard-pressed to think of many situations where I'd meaningfully benefit from the speed jump. There certainly are use cases for speeds like those (e.g. able to do work from a cellular-connected laptop), so I'm glad to see that the rollout is happening, but the heaviest thing most smartphone users might do is watch an HD video on YouTube, which only needs 3-5 Mbps for 1080p, which is a fraction of the speed that 4G already offers. They'll see no benefit from 5G, so marketing it as "storming" the holiday season is nothing more than an attempt at driving demand for a feature that laypeople don't really understand.

      • The one case maybe 5G would be more useful for would be when tethering, if your laptop needed some large app update...

        But basically I agree with you, that I don't see a pressing need. If I have a good strong LTE signal I will already be getting pretty good speeds.

        I'm sure 5G will be nice, I just don't see it as a major selling point for a while.

      • The tower ranges for the 5G deployments in California are so short that they will literally be on every streetcorner. This will provide millimeter level signal accuracy for every person carrying a 5G capable cellphone, and likely will turn out to have passive sensing capabilities for 3G/4G phones as well.

        Imagine this more like a stingray on every streetcorner and you will begin to understand the push to deploy 5G everywhere, even in neighborhoods that want to charge the network carriers more for the benefit

      • I got an HTC Thunderbolt (the first and only 4G phone in my area on Verizon) on the last day to be grandfathered into unlimited data. Of course years later unlimited data is the norm. But will it be unlimited on 5G?

    • if there's a problem, right? No beta testing needed.

      For me I'm interested in 5G because with the 5G roll out comes better coverage in buildings for my carrier. And just plain better coverage overall.

      • You do know it'll just drop back to 4G

        That's honestly what I'm really getting at here, because some of the worst battery life I've had from phones is when they are switching between network modes - I travel to Utah a lot and it varies all over between 2G, 3G, LTE and so on. All of that switching really drains the battery to the point where in an area it will be changing a lot I sometimes just go into airplane mode so it will not be spending a lot of effort trying to maintain a connection.

        Very probably the

    • Buying this phone simply because it's an early adopter of 5G is probably a silly thing to do. However if you feel this phone (without 5G) is worth it and you're the type to upgrade only every 2-3 years, maybe being 5G capable is a tie-breaker and helps future proof the phone a bit.

      It's not like it will be 5G exclusive.

      • However if you feel this phone (without 5G) is worth it and you're the type to upgrade only every 2-3 years, maybe being 5G capable is a tie-breaker and helps future proof the phone a bit.

        I'm actually thinking the other way on this one - I was thinking about getting another phone next year (generally try to get a new one every other year). But what I don't want to do is buy first-get hardware with a new technology, just as the networks will be growing and tested through next year, so too will the chips ins

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
          I get a new phone every 3 or 4 years and even then I always go back one generation of phone because I'm cheap and am not a big user.

          But I have friends that upgrade a bit more frequently and like the latest and greatest, 5G capable might be something for them.

          The early adopters always run into issues. There is some benefit to being first to market but there are plenty of companies (Apple, Toyota, for example) that let others make the path then come in with more polished versions.

    • iPhone 5G will be like iPhone 3G.

      https://www.computerworld.com/article/2532458/apple-mac/faq--iphone-3g-reception-----what-s-the-problem-.html

      You're better off waiting until at least 2021

  • I have a 7 year old 3G smartphone (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @11:12AM (#57753024)

    It still works. I'll keep it. Fuck Christmas (sorry, it's "holiday season" officially now) mass consumption.

    In fact, fuck mass consumption and planned obsolescence year round...

    • Really... The best time to buy is after the "holidays"... Can hardly wait to see the nice low prices on a Note 9...

  • For your 1G data cap.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @11:26AM (#57753098)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Christmas 2019? That's maybe 2 CPU releases from here. And being a TMO subscriber, I'm way more interested in Band 71 than early 5G.

    Oh, how about both? Yeah, baby. w/e.

  • Really! Then tell me all about it next year.

  • Get ready to buy another new, much better 5G phone in 2021, as 5G service moves beyond the hype phase and really gets going. And probably another phone in 2023 as 5G matures.

    It's cool though. I have QCOM stock. Everyone obviously needs a new phone.

  • NOT "fast", with more than paper in-between! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @11:34AM (#57753146)

    * The frequencies for "5G" are so high, the barely get through anything at all. You nearly could as well just use laser.
    * Everyone in your area still has to share the same base station, with likely the same slow connection to the Internet.
    * The caps will still be complete jokes.
    * There is no 5G standard yet, so they will not work right, as soon as the standard is finalized and rolled out.

    Great job, Qualcomm!
    Trying to force your version to become the de-facto standard, no matter what the rest of the 3GPP agree on, are we?

    • * The frequencies for "5G" are so high, the barely get through anything at all. You nearly could as well just use laser.
      * Everyone in your area still has to share the same base station, with likely the same slow connection to the Internet.
      * The caps will still be complete jokes.
      * There is no 5G standard yet, so they will not work right, as soon as the standard is finalized and rolled out.

      Great job, Qualcomm!
      Trying to force your version to become the de-facto standard, no matter what the rest of the 3GPP agree on, are we?

      Spot-On: Mod this to Infinity!

  • That's nice. . . but (Score:4, Informative)

    by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @11:48AM (#57753218)

    The true question is, will the carriers have a RELIABLE, widespread 5G system upon which to use said phones ?

    The low frequency spectrum of 5G should be fine, but you won't see all the super bandwidth that the tech promises at that level.

    It's when you get to the high end of the 5G spectrum ( which is where all the bandwidth is ) that I have concerns about how well it's going to work considering the frequency at which it operates. ( 27 - 40 GHZ ) This area of the spectrum has serious issues when it comes to weather ( Rain, snow, fog, etc ) and has pretty much zero penetration so line of sight to the transmitter is pretty much mandatory.

    The way I visualize it is thinking about the effect heavy rain has on your Satellite TV signal. All those glitches and pixelation you see are a visual representation of what's going to happen to your data at the high bandwidth end of a 5G signal when the weather goes to sh*t. ( And at millimeter wavelengths, it will take far less weather to have the same effect )

    My theory anyway, some cellular engineer should chime in and tell me to STFU if I'm thinking incorrectly about all of this. ( Be sure to explain why )

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Puls4r ( 724907 )
      Considering how poor the initial LTE offerings were, I expect this to be no better. I remember trying to use my phone and having it jump back and forth between LTE and 3G because the coverage was shit as we traveled when LTE was being rolled out. Of course, the early LTE phones didn't really have a way to tell them not to use LTE, so what you got was an experience WORSE that 3G as your interconnection connection swapped back and forth and back and forth.

      5G is going to be that. But much much worse. U

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jwhyche ( 6192 )

        I went through this with 3G and some low bandwidth shit that AT&T had. Edge, I believe it was called. This is the reason I always wait at least a year or two before getting on board with a new network technology. Give them time to get the bugs out and the coverage maps updated.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I just don't get what the big deal is about 5G. LTE is already so fast it does everything I could possibly want with a mobile device. The only way more speed would be of value would be if I needed to regularly deal with multi-gigabyte files while on the train or something. Which would never happen anyway because the average mobile company is so stingy with the total monthly bandwidth that I'd never do that anyway. Which again, makes 5G basically pointless except for the super wealthy.

  • Methinks it will be a tempest in a teapot...

  • Samsung, for one, said it will have a phone for Verizon, AT&T and other networks in the first half of the year.

    I don't understand why they need to make different models for each carrier band. The transceiver chips aren't that expensive and don't take much room. Give me a phone I can take to whatever carrier I want when I want, and be done with it. Hell, the cost of the chips can probably be offset by the need to design and make different motherboards.

    Oh, and a battery I can replace would be nice as well.

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