5G technology is about to invade the smartphone market and will not do it silently or economically. After the presentation of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Mobile Platform, the first to offer an integrated 5G modem, there are numerous manufacturers who are announcing their intention to shortly present a smartphone capable of supporting the new mobile networks.
Among these, OnePlus could not miss, whose CEO and co-founder Pete Lau was present at the Qualcomm Snapdragon Tech Summit in Maui, Hawaii. During some interviews given to some American newspapers present at the event, Lau spoke about the “dark side” of the new technology, explaining what consumers should expect.
The first negative point is given by the increase in prices of smartphones able to support the new 5G networks, about 200 to 300 dollars more than current prices.
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However, the increase in the sales price will not stop OnePlus, which wants to be on the market as soon as possible to satisfy the demand of its users. The engineers find themselves with many challenges, first of all the difficulty of creating a product that can work with the different operators, who will work on completely different frequency blocks.
According to Pete Lau it will be very difficult to make smartphones “beautiful to see”, due to the need to insert several antennas in the device. Precisely for this reason the CEO is not certain about the date of release of the next flagship, nor even on the possible selling price.
What is certain, however, is that OnePlus will do everything possible to make a smartphone priced below $1,000. It is therefore likely that OnePlus 7, or whatever will be the name of the new flagship that will arrive on the market within the first half of 2019, may have a price that will be around $ 800.