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Sprint Announces Collaboration With LG To Roll Out First 5G Smartphone In 2019
Sprint and LG's 5G smartphone is expected to get released by early next year
It seems the wait for the first 5G smartphone will get over in the first half of 2019 as Sprint has announced that it has partnered with LG to roll out a 5G enabled smartphone in the US market by early next year. If the launch goes as planned, Sprint will become the first carrier to offer 5G services across the country.
“Sprint is moving fast on the road to 5G and we are thrilled to announce the first 5G smartphone with the innovative team at LG,” Sprint CTO Dr. John Saw noted in an official statement. “LG has done tremendous work developing technical designs that enable us to be among the first movers in mobile 5G. Today’s announcement brings us one step closer to putting a beautifully-designed advanced 5G smartphone in our customer’s hands.”
Sprint has plans to launch a 5G network in six cities by the end of this year and in another three cities by next year including Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Phoenix, New York City, and Washington DC.
According to the mobile network company, the 5G rollout will bring faster and more reliable internet speeds to its customers. Notably, the shift from 4G to 5G will enable Sprint customers to download full-length HD movie within seconds, and play high-speed games without delays, hiccups or lag-time.
William Cho, LG Electronics North America President, and CEO said the company is looking forward to expanding its 20-year-old partnership with Sprint through the 5G smartphone. He said that the LG team is quite enthusiastic about partnering with Sprint’s 5G experts to bring 5G mobile phones to market in the U.S. while continuing to evolve LG’s best-in-class design elements for Sprint customers.
Sprint claims that its 5G enabled Massive MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) cell sites will be able to handle 10 times the capacity of its LTE systems. There are no concrete details available about the 5G LG smartphone other than the vague release date.
Notably, AT&T and Verizon are also aiming to have 5G networks and 5G enabled services and smartphones ready to go by 2019.
