Chinese manufacturing giant, Xiaomi, recently released the Xiaomi Mi 9 which is the company’s first flagship smartphone for 2019. This device comes with the Snapdragon 855 SoC but it does not use Qualcomm Snapdragon X50 modem which means that it does not support 5G network. Yesterday, Xiaomi released the 5G version of the Xiaomi Mi MIX 3 and the arrival of this smartphone has perturbed the curiosity of netizens regarding Xiaomi Mi 9’s compatibility with 5G network. Wang Teng, product director of Xiaomi, cleared the uncertainty by saying “there is no 5G version of the Xiaomi Mi 9”. However, his statement refers to the present day and he did not state whether the company is considering the option.
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Sun Changxu, a partner of Xiaomi Industry Investment Department, said that the biggest challenge of 5G will come from the attitude of operators. From the China Mobile Conference in December last year, operators have not yet thought about the profit model of the 5G era, and the huge traffic profit model in the 3G era has ended.
Moreover, the coverage of the 5G base station in the high-frequency band is small, and the number of base stations is required. Although China Mobile has obtained the 2.6Ghz frequency band, it can partially utilize the existing base station site, but Telecom and China Unicom will re-select the site in the new 3.5Ghz band. Compared with the currently mature 3.5Ghz technology, China Mobile’s 2.6Ghz technology is not very mature, so the three major operators in China are facing huge challenges.
