World’s first 5G smartphone will be from Lenovo and will have Snapdragon 855: Company VP Chang Cheng

Chinese conglomerate Huawei, and smartphone-maker OnePlus have already cleared their stances on 5G phones. Both the companies have already said that they look forward to launching their 5G-ready smartphones in 2019. It seems they have a competitor with Lenovo in the fray. The company's Vice President, Chang Cheng has claimed on Chinese micro-blogging website Weibo that the world’s first 5G phone will be from Lenovo and it will be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset.

Cheng did not reveal any information other than this, but the claims suggest that Lenovo is ahead of the curve when it comes to launching the first 5G phone in the world. The mention of Snapdragon 855 is somewhat peculiar because there are not much details about the chipset available. A report had earlier claimed that Samsung, not Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), will be manufacturing the SoC on the 7nm process. Reportedly, Samsung’s facilities are ready six months ahead of schedule, and are likely to manufacture the 5G modem chips for Qualcomm using their EUV fabrication process.

Previous reports have suggested that Huawei plans to launch its first 5G smartphone in the second half of 2019. The company presented a slideshow at the company’s global analyst summit in Shenzhen which had details of company’s plans related to 5G technology next year. Reportedly, Huawei will launch the first 5G mobile hotspot in Q2 of 2019 before it launches the smartphone. Huawei has also been conducting 5G trials in India, in partnership with Airtel.

On the similar lines, Founder and CEO of OnePlus Peter Lau said at the Mobile World Congress, Shanghai, that the company could launch a 5G-ready OnePlus device next year. The executive, however, did not confirm the name of the phone getting 5G capabilities.

Earlier this year, US market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) predicted that consumers will start seeing 5G on their smartphones sometime in the second half of 2019, with a steady rise in regional availability all the way till 2020. The firm claimed that nearly seven percent of all smartphones will be 5G-enabled by 2020.

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