ZTE who are currently investing in the expansion of their brand in Australia, is set to reveal a 5G smartphone.
A major supplier to Telstra, and the manufacturer of the carrier’s house brand devices ZTE is set to use the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to reveal an LTE smartphone that can deliver 5G speeds.
This device will be able to better cope with things like 360-degree virtual reality, 4K video and instant cloud storage on the move.
For those of you wondering what indeed gigabit LTE is, it’s a wireless technology that can support speeds of up to 1Gbps, which are far faster than anything 4G LTE offers.
They will join a very exclusive club of devices capable of supporting gigabit LTE speeds.
Qualcomm is another firm at the forefront of bringing gigabit LTE to the masses and is the only company that has so far released a product that harnesses its power, a mobile hotspot that it developed in conjunction with Netgear, Ericsson and Telstra.
According to Trusted Reviews ZTE gigabit phone is being tipped to use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 processor, as it includes an X16 modem capable of supporting gigabit LTE speeds.
By way of comparison, Qualcomm’s older X12 modem could only support maximum download speeds of 600Mbps, as opposed to the 1Gbps maximum offered by the X16.
But while plenty of people are quick to point out that the first gigabit LTE devices will serve as a precursor to 5G rollout, it’s unlikely that we’ll see the next-gen network technology until roughly 2020.
That said, 5G is set to feature heavily at MWC 2017, so we’re sure to leave this year’s show with a better idea of what’s coming, and when.
