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Qualcomm: 5G Android Flagship Phones Will Storm the 2019 Holidays (cnet.com)
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."
The 3GPP (the people responsible for GSM/UMTS/LTE) have said they don't plan to release a "standard" until March next year, the standard being slightly faster than the current generation of LTE. The standard will undergo continuous revisions then until it's ready to submit to the ITU as a true "5G" technology, which will be... 2020.
So Qualcomm are talking about of their rears. What's going to happen is that a beta of an unfinished technology will be present in some phones by Christmas 2019, which will not be appreciably better than anything out right now, and might even be worse given the whole "Your phone may find itself connected via "5G NR" and due to a bug in your phone, or the tower, which is likely because this involves brand new hardware and software that's not undergone significant field testing, your phone doesn't work properly.
Do not want.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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 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 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 )