At the rate carriers are gearing up to launch 5G, it’s safe to say that at least as far as the US market is concerned, many can start to look forward to 5G coverage in most major cities in 2019. However this begs the question of which devices are expected to be capable of taking advantage of the new technology?
According to Qualcomm, that won’t be a problem as they expect that every Android maker will have a 5G flagship smartphone launched by the end of 2019. This is according to an interview that Qualcomm’s President Cristiano Amon did with CNET where he expressed his belief that there won’t be a shortage of 5G smartphones in 2019.
Amon was quoted as saying, “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. Every Android vendor is working on 5G right now.” So far we have heard from several major handset makers, such as Samsung and OnePlus, who are aiming to launch 5G handsets next year.
This is quite a stark contrast compared to a recent report from Bloomberg, where they reaffirm an earlier report suggesting that Apple might be waiting until 2020 to launch a 5G iPhone. Apple had also famously waited a while before launching a 4G capable iPhone, which its competition wasted no time mocking them for it, and we expect it’ll probably be the same with 5G.