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HUAWEI plans first 5G phone for Q3 2019, might be Mate 30

The first HUAWEI 5G smartphone will land only a few months after a 5G-capable hotspot. Could the 5G smartphone be the Mate 30?
By
April 17, 2018
TL;DR
  • At its global analyst summit in Shenzhen, an announcement was made regarding the first HUAWEI 5G smartphone landing in Q3 2019.
  • The first HUAWEI 5G smartphone will land right after the first 5G-capable Wi-Fi hotspot. Both will run on HUAWEI-designed modems.
  • If the upcoming entry in the Mate line is the Mate 20, it’s possible the first HUAWEI 5G smartphone could be the Mate 30.

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei is in the middle of its global analyst summit in Shenzhen, in which it gives details on its plans for the next year. During a presentation, a HUAWEI rep confirmed that the first 5G smartphone from HUAWEI would land in the second half of 2019.

Sometime before the second half of 2019, HUAWEI also confirmed it would release a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot that is capable of 5G speeds. You can see the presentation via Neil Shah’s Twitter posting below.

Big news:
First @Huawei 5G smartphone with its own 5G chipset coming in 2H 2019. Which mostly points to the Mate series.#HAS2018 pic.twitter.com/8k5qThGEmp
— Neil Shah (@neiltwitz) April 17, 2018

What’s interesting is that both the future hotspot and smartphone will feature HUAWEI-designed modems to attain those 5G speeds. The company debuted the Balong 5G01 chip at Mobile World Congress 2018, which is the likely model (or a similar one) that will end up in the hotspot. But as of yet, we have no info on what the future smartphone’s chip will be.

That’s what we know, but what can we speculate? Well, the first 5G smartphone from HUAWEI might be the Mate 30 (if we assume that the upcoming entry in the Mate series is the Mate 20 due to the HUAWEI P20 line not being called the P11 line). If you look at the release history of the Mate series, we can expect a Mate phone to drop in Q3 of 2019, which lines up nicely with this 5G announcement.

However, since the first 5G phone will be quite the milestone for the company, HUAWEI may elect to release the device under a new line. In that case, we would get both a Mate 30 and this 5G-capable smartphone. That seems unlikely, but it’s certainly a possibility.

With the first half of 2018 coming to a close in a few months, we can expect other smartphone manufacturers to start making announcements about their 5G plans. It wouldn’t be surprising to hear that the timelines of other companies match up with HUAWEI’s.

What do you think? Will you buy the first 5G phone, even if it’s likely that it will only attain those speeds in particular areas under very specific conditions for at least the first year of its life? Let us know in the comments!

NEXT: AT&T rolling out 5G? Who cares?