ZTE may have announced the most future forward smartphone yet, but it’s still a ways away from being possible in Canada.
The Gigabit Phone, the world’s first 5G smartphone, was revealed by the Chinese-based ZTE at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this past week. This will be the first smartphone to support download speeds reaching up to 1 Gbps. To put that in perspective, here in Canada Bell, Rogers, and Telus average speeds of about 20 Mbps, meaning a truly 5G smartphone could be nearly 50 times faster than what Canadians are currently used too.
To make 5G network speeds possible, the Gigabit Phone is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset. That same chipset also powers Qualcomm’s first 5G modem, the Snapdragon X16.
With the power of 5G behind it, other features that ZTE hopes to include in the Gigabit Phone are instant cloud storage, 360 degree panoramic VR video, and entertainment upgrades of ultra H-Fi music and movies, as well as instant APP which would get rid of the need to download or install applications.
To be fair, ZTE has made it clear that this is just a concept phone, and that it won’t be releasing it for the time being. Currently the only area in the world that could support 5G network speeds is a hotspot in Australia using the Snapdragon X16, which is far and away ahead of the pack when it comes to networks being prepared for this 5G future.
While Canadians may not be able to get there hands on this type of device in the near-future, ZTE’s proof of concept is just a glimpse at the type of speeds we could be seeing over the next few years. 10 to 50 times faster network speeds? Count me in.