5G phones to hit shelves next year

Dubai

The time is not right to launch 5G-enabled phones this year as some big telecom operators will launch services in the first-half of 2019.

“Smartphones with 5G support will be launched next year and it will be a bit expensive compared to the current 4G LTE devices as the 5G devices need to have both 4G and 5G antennas on a single device,” said Shawn Sheng, of Huawei Consumer Business Group.

He said that 5G is needed for virtual- and augmented reality, but real use cases will be for industrial-scale Internet of Things and enterprise apps for faster speed and low latency.