OnePlus will be among the first to launch a 5G phone

OnePlus was a small niche player in the world of smartphones. It's still not the same as Samsung or LG, but OnePlus may well be about to break through. According to Carl Pei, co-founder of OnePlus, the company will be among the first to launch a 5G smartphone in 2019 – it could even be from the very first.

Since its first phone, OnePlus worked closely with Qualcomm on SoC and modem technologies. OnePlus phones always use the latest Qualcomm hardware and are much cheaper than other phones of the same specification. It's no surprise that OnePlus is quick to adopt 5G in phones.

Pei notes that OnePlus has already completed a 5G test at Qualcomm headquarters in San Francisco. This test would have been based on hardware such as the Snapdragon X50 5G modem, but we do not know what OnePlus will use in its next phone. The X50 is a standalone 5G device. The device must use the LTE modem in the Snapdragon SoC to connect most of the time. Motorola's solution is to sell an add-on Mod for the Moto Z3, which contains its own battery and a 5G modem.

A Qualcomm SoC future will surely integrate 5G, but nobody knows when it will happen. Qualcomm has announced a finer antenna QTM052 5G (see below) that could help make 5G phones less cumbersome. LTE connectivity will remain the most important part of a smartphone's modem setup in the near future. Current implementations of 5G mainly use millimeter frequencies that can push a wide bandwidth. However, they are unable to cross even thin obstacles. If you are in a building without an indoor 5G network, you will be on LTE.

The announcement of a 5G phone comes as OnePlus has to launch the OnePlus 6T in a few days. This phone will definitely do not be 5G-enabled. However, it could be launched on T-Mobile, which would be a big step for OnePlus. T-Mobile also plans to launch its 5G network next year. This could mean that OnePlus is a launch partner of T-Mobile's 5G network.

OnePlus launches two flagship phones a year, one at the end of autumn and the other at the end of spring. According to the start of the launch of 5G in 2019, the mysterious device could be a customized version of the operator of the OnePlus 6T or the successor of this phone.

Noe read: Verizon launches non-real 5G network, Qualcomm announces new 7nm SoC samples with 5G modems and OnePlus plans a 5G phone for 2019