5G smartphones: A guide for business professionals (free PDF)
Mobile network operators are planning for the 5G future—and so are smartphone vendors. This ebook looks at which smartphones are being marketed as 5G capable and when new devices are likely to appear on the scene.
From the ebook:
Mobile network operators around the world are sprinting to deploy 5G networks to more efficiently serve the increasing number of devices that users and businesses are connecting to mobile networks. Though smartphones are already ubiquitous, the increased use of mobile broadband adapters, always-connected computers, and consumer and enterprise IoT devices will require more data than current 4G networks can sustainably supply.
Naturally, smartphone manufacturers are eager to be the first out of the gate with a 5G phone. Because of this, some mobile network operators and smartphone manufacturers may label proprietary or transitional network technologies as being 5G, though these devices will not receive all of the benefits that “true” 5G offers (or at least promises).
This guide offers an overview of smartphones marketed as being 5G capable, as well as a forecast of when manufacturers will release new devices.
What is 5G?
5G refers to the fifth generation of cellular mobile communications. Strictly speaking, the industry standard is called 5G NR (New Radio). Unlike the fourth generation of cellular mobile communications, which had two competing standards—LTE and WiMAX—there is no competing standard to 5G NR. However, the 5G NR standards are designed to be quite versatile to accommodate a diverse range of use cases.
5G NR allows for networks to operate on a wide variety of frequencies, most notably recycling the frequencies vacated by decommissioning 2G and 3G networks, along with the digital dividend of spectrum vacated from the transition to digital TV broadcasts, and previously unused extremely high frequency (EHF) or millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies, which comprise the 30 to 300 GHz range.