U.S. carriers have said that the plan to begin rolling out 5G coverage this year or next, and now a smartphone maker has come forward to tease its 5G plans.
ZTE wants to release a 5G-capable smartphone in late 2018 or early 2019. Those plans may change depending on the availability of 5G networks and the required chipsets, though.
With carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile saying that they'll have 5G networks in the next year or two, it makes sense that some manufacturers would begin teasing smartphone launches for around the same time. After all, a 5G network doesn't mean much if you don't have any smartphones for consumers to use on it. For now we'll just have to wait and see if the carriers follow through on their 5G network plans and if ZTE and others are able to get new hardware out to use on those networks.
Do you plan on being an early 5G smartphone adopter?