8 PCWorld JANUARY 2020NEWS 5G PHONES YOU WANT COMING EARLY 2020
(go.pcworld.com/dec6) is a “lowband”
phone, capable of accessing T-Mobile’s
600MHz 5G network. But it won’t be able to
access the short-range, high-bandwidth, and
extremely fast mmWave spectrum that Verizon
is rolling out, and that T-Mobile has deployed
in a handful of cities. On the other hand,
phones like the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G for
Verizon are optimized for high-speed
mmWave communication, which yield the
sort of eye-popping gigabit downloads that
dominate headlines, but can’t access sub-
6GHz frequencies.
Put another way, it’s a strong argument to
avoid buying any 5G phone now, simply
because there’s very little future-proofing
involved. However, Alex Katouzian, senior vice
president and general manager of mobile atQualcomm Technologies, said that will change.
“Starting in [the first quarter] of 2020,
you’ll see a bunch of phones that will have
both [mmWave and sub-6GHz],” he said at an
executive roundtable at the Qualcomm
Snapdragon Technology Forum in Hawaii.
According to Qualcomm president
Cristiano Amon, AT&T and Verizon, the first
two operators to launch mmWave, had
neither midband capabilities nor dynamic
spectrum sharing (DSS), which would allow
the base station to use both frequencies
simultaneously. Katzouian went further, saying
that Qualcomm deliberately simplified the
OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren Edition to make
it easier to roll out.
“If you look at that solution, it’s...the
[Snapdragon] 855 Plus and the X55,” he said.
“And in order to get that
into the market as fast as
possible, we went sub-
6GHz only with them.
There was no technical
limitation at all.”
However, change is on
the horizon. A “great
number” of the 200-plus
designs the company has
seen—presumably with
the upcoming X
modem, though he didn’t
specify—include both
sub-6GHz as well as
Samsung’s Galaxy S10 5G is optimized for mmWave communication. mmWave capabilities,