Both LG and Samsung will debut their first 5G-capable smartphones at Mobile World Congress 2019, according to a new report from Bloomberg.
The annual trade show, scheduled to start on February 25th this upcoming year, sees the entire mobile industry descend upon Barcelona, Spain.
Earlier this year, Sprint announced it was working with LG to bring a 5G smartphone to the U.S. AT&T did the same with Samsung.
The big two Korean firms aren’t the only smartphone OEMs working towards 5G commercialization.
At the start of December, OnePlus CEO and co-founder Pete Lau announced at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Tech Summit in Maui that his company was working with British carrier EE to launch its first 5G smartphone. Initially, it appeared OnePlus would be the first smartphone OEM to launch a 5G-capable handset. However, it was later revealed that Lau’s slide deck included a translation error. Instead, OnePlus will be among the first companies to launch a 5G smartphone.
While there will be a variety of 5G-capable smartphones out next year, Canadian consumers will have to wait to take advantage of them. The federal government has yet to auction off most of the necessary mmWave and Sub-6Ghz spectrum that carriers need to build out their 5G networks. Those auctions won’t happen until 2020.
Source: Bloomberg
