Oppo claimed to be the first to unveil a 5G smartphone at MWC 2019. At its event in Barcelona, the company briefly showed its 5G smartphone, but did not detail much about it, from its availability to its specifications – beyond revealing it would be powered by the Snapdragon 855 SoC. The Chinese company also announced the Oppo 5G Landing Project, saying it was partnering with telcos like Optus, Singtel, Swisscom, and Telstra for the launch and rollout of 5G products and services.
At its event, Oppo Vice President Anyi Jiang held up what he called Oppo’s first 5G smartphone, and claimed that many obstacles had been overcome to achieve the feat – including the design of the antenna and RF modules. Cristiano Amon, President of Qualcomm, was also called on stage, and revealed that the first Oppo 5G smartphone would be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC and the Snapdragon X50 modem.
Qualcomm’s Amon in a statement said, “Given their leadership in the 4G era, Oppo is well positioned to be a leader in the transition to 5G. We see tremendous opportunities to drive further innovation in the 5G era, and Qualcomm Technologies looks forward to working closely with Oppo to realise the true potential of 5G and support the launch of their first 5G smartphone powered by our flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Mobile Platform with the X50 5G modem, integrated RF transceiver and RF Front-End solutions.”
The lack of details behind the launch of course stands a little in contrast to Samsung, which unveiled Galaxy S10 5G variant at its San Francisco event earlier this week with a Q2 2019 release date on Verizon Wireless in the US – though to be fair, that announcement was not accompanied by a price tag either.
