Huawei announced the launch of its first 5G smartphone in the third quarter of 2019 worldwide. Huawei has been one of the chief advocates for pushing 5G technology in the last couple of years and so its announcement of a 5G phone next year comes less of a surprise and more of a calibrated move in the smartphone market. It is not only Huawei that is poised to bring the innovation to the table but also other brands like HMD Global (Nokia), Xiaomi, HTC, Oppo, Sony and LG have plans to reveal new 5G smartphones in 2019.
In February this year, Huawei and Bharti Airtel tied up to conduct a successful test set-up trial in India. The trial was carried out in Airtel’s Network Experience Center, located in Manesar in Gurugram. The trial was able to achieve a throughput value of 3Gbps, the highest ever achieved in a mobile network running on 3.5GHz band coupled with 100MHz bandwidth. After conducting the trial Emmanuel Coelho Alves, Director, Wireless Marketing, Huawei HQ, said Huawei has been continuously focusing on developing 5G ecosystem and the tie-up with Airtel demonstrated the powerful ability of a 5G connection. Huawei India CEO Jay Chen also told IANS that Huawei will roll out 5G technology in India along with the rest of the world.
The 5G smartphone of Huawei will have its own 5G modem, unlike other Chinese brands who have tied up with Qualcomm’s X50 5G NR modem to provide in smartphones. Speaking at the Huawei Analyst Summit, Huawei Chairman Eric Xu talked about the efficiency of 5G technology and how it will increase connection efficiency and bring down data cost. The 5G deployment will first happen in densely populated areas to address bandwidth demand and improve connectivity and internet.
Other than having Huawei’s own 5G modem which is the – Balong 5G 01 chip – the model that will have this technology is rumored to be Mate 30. Huawei’s 5G modem will deliver a bandwidth of 2.3Gbps, as tested and shown by the company in Mobile World Congress. The Balong chip is too big to fit in a mobile device according to some experts, but according to Huawei it is on the way of creating a mobile friendly version of this chip for 5G technology.
Huawei is not only developing its new 5G smartphone but also other collateral 5G products and create an entire gamut of 5G networking devices that will be essential in building the 5G ecosystem.
