OnePlus CEO Pete Lau confirmed over his twitter page that next year the company will unveil its first 5G smartphone, reportedly OnePlus 7. OnePlus gave us a hint of this news before but the confirmation from Pete Lau in July 16 almost comes from the horse’s mouth. In his twitter feed, Pete Lau further talked about their successful venture with Qualcomm in bringing this technology to OnePLus smartphones. This will enlist OnePlus in the forefront of 5G technology along with other smartphones.
Reportedly many Chinese brands other than OnePlus, like Vivo, Xiaomi, and HTC are also planning to embed their upcoming smartphones with 5G modem from Qualcomm. This is also in alignment with Qualcomm’s statement during the beginning of this year about its new 5G ready chipset which is compatible with smartphones. Qualcomm also revealed that smartphone companies will begin launching 5G phones from 2019. According to Qualcomm, the 5G network will be constructed over 1 gigabit LTE 4G networks. Currently, there are a bunch of countries where Qualcomm is carrying out 5G testing, including India where it had a successful test run this year with Bharti Airtel.
The news of OnePlus 7 also tells us that the phone will have a next generation Qualcomm processor, which is likely to be Snapdragon 855. The buzz is, 5G phones will come with higher price tags because it is a new technology that will take time to garner support and ease of use widely.
But it is still a question if OnePlus 7 with its 5G support will be able to access the network in India. The 5G technology has to work in tandem with telephone service provider and therefore come bundled with telecom companies, which is not the case in Indian market. Reliance Jio announced that it is working to bring 5G connectivity to India as soon as possible. Though it is a wait and watch scenario for us, in 2019 5G smartphones will play a different ballgame in smartphone market worldwide.
