Available 5G smartphones in half a year, but not from Apple

Affordable 5G smartphones could go on sale in just six months, as the first budget

MediaTek 5G SoC chipset that supportsThe fifth generation of cellular networks will be released a little earlier, and manufacturers will have time to build devices on this platform. The chipmaker announced that it is sending samples of the processor with the Helio M70 5G modem to its partners; the stone will most likely go to retail early next year. In general, we are expecting cheap 5G smartphones at the upcoming MWC.

Feasibility

On the one hand, the emergence of low-cost smartphones with5G, this is good, on the other - what is the audience, who will be the buyer of these devices? The fact is that the networks of the fifth generation, in fact, do not yet exist, and have only just begun to deploy, and the network is available only in a few cities of a couple of countries. Moreover, this situation will continue, at least two or three years, if not longer. So for whom will these smartphones be made? Which, by the way, will still be significantly more expensive than state employees in 4G modems and, especially, with 3G. And the latter, by the way, is more in the world. Today, even the fourth generation of networks is not in many countries, and in developed ones too, these networks cover less than half of the territory. What kind of 5G smartphones can we talk about now? If only to consider it as a marketing ploy, as a convulsive search for points of growth, at least offer something to the buyer, if only they would change their smartphones to new ones.

5G MediTek

No details yet (including titlefuture processors) is not announced, it is known only that the new chipset will receive support for working with cameras up to 80 megapixels, 60 FPS when shooting at 4K resolution, as well as third-generation AI processing technology. Today MediTek is one of the few chip maker companies that will compete with American Qualcomm in terms of supplying 5G modems to smartphone makers. Today there is only one supplier. A year later, Apple may join the fight, which recently acquired its 5G chip business from Intel.

In any case, MediaTek smartphoneswill be cheaper than their competitors on processors and with Qualcomm modems. Perhaps for China this is really good news, since Chinese operators promise to activate the deployment of fifth-generation networks and next year to cover most of the country. One of the most anticipated benefits of 5G is the ability to broadcast resource-intensive games from cloud services. Cloud gaming is waiting for very many users who now cannot afford to acquire powerful expensive hardware that could pull AAA projects. With the advent of 5G, the problem will disappear as a class, because on the simplest and cheapest device you can play the most difficult modern games, since computational operations will fall on powerful servers, and the device will only be broadcast a picture that can be controlled with a meager delay.

Apple does not aim for 5G

Apple’s quarterly report shows that for manyFor the first time, the company received less than a half profit from selling smartphones At the same time, sales are falling for a long time and so much so that quantitative indicators have disappeared from the reports, only money has remained. Tim Cook estimated the deal with Intel as one of the largest for the company, but no more. He noted that the company is ready to invest further in a new business, but no rush is expected. It is already clear to everyone that Apple will introduce its 5G smartphones significantly later than all of its main competitors, as well as many Chinese mid-level and low-end companies. The head of the Cupertin technological giant explained the company's slowness in this direction by the fact that the 5G infrastructure is in a state where no smartphones and modems are needed by the market, by and large. This is a rudimentary state, and it makes no sense to force the situation by installing useless modems in smartphones.