Barcelone is currently a beehive of activities with OEMs trying to outdo one another by showcasing cutting edge technology and features in mobile devices at the currently ongoing Mobile World Congress (MWC 2019).
There are those OEMs like Huawei and Samsung who have debuted the next generation of smartphones; foldable phones. While OEMs showcasing foldable smartphones are few, there are a handful of others who have decided to grab the attention using a different feature 5G technology.
These OEMs include LG, Oppo, Xiaomi, Huawei and Sony. Speaking of which, Pocket-lint reports of seeing a prototype 5G smartphone AG-1 at the Sony and Qualcomm’s booth at MWC 2019. Though Sony says the smartphone is only a prototype and does not in any way confirm how the final product will look like. The company has also not said when we should expect the smartphone to start shipping.
An official from Sony told Pocket-lint that the 5G devices is not yet a “commercial product” but rather, a test device that is being used to test the 5G network. The OEM says it is currently doing some test with various versions of the 5G network hardware in order to “understand [what would happen] if you take an antenna away from a certain place and make it thinner.”
The Sony spokesperson said the company is “massively involved in 5G, just not launching anything commercially just yet. You can see we have a product so in the near-future.”
People privy to the company’s internal workings say Sony could be launching a 5G ready smartphone before the end of this year. They believe Sony’s first commercial 5G capable smartphone could be launched at the IFA 2019 taking place later this year in September.
Should that come to pass, we expect the phone to 5G technology to be running on Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chip combined with the X50 5G modem.
