Over the weekend OPPO announced its first 5G phone at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Seeing as the event hasn’t officially kicked off yet, we’re expecting this to be one of the any 5G announcements this week.
When it comes to the Australian market, the manufacturer will be launching its next gen device with both Telstra and Optus.
[referenced url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2019/02/oppo-reveals-worlds-first-10x-lossless-zoom-phone-camera/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/oppo-zoom-1-410×231.jpg” title=”OPPO Reveals World’s First 10x Lossless Zoom Phone Camera” excerpt=”Mobile World Congress hasn’t officially kicked off yet, but news is already starting to flow out of Barcelona. OPPO has been showing off some of the new tech that we’re going to see in 2019, including a 10x lossless zoom smartphone camera.”]
This makes the yet-to-be-revealed OPPO device the first 5G handset to be announced for Optus.
This news comes mere days after Telstra announced exclusive carrier rights on the freshly-unveiled Samsung Galaxy 5G.
Only a concept video has been shown off so far, so we really don’t know anything about the specs other than a confirmed Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor.
From squinting really hard at the video, our guess is that this won’t be the same phone with 10x optical lossless zoom that was announced at the same conference.
“Given their leadership in the 4G era, OPPO is well positioned to be a leader in the transition to 5G,” said Cristiano Amon, President of Qualcomm Incorporated.
“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.”
We don’t know when this new device will appear on the market, as this will somewhat depend upon the rollout of the Telstra and Optus 5G mobile networks.
Telstra is likely to have the infrastructure up and running first, with an expectation for it to be live by the end of Q2 2019.
While Optus is also in the process of rolling out 5G into select suburbs, this is for 5G home broadband. The telco is yet to reveal much on the 5G mobile broadband front.
Considering the joint Telstra and Optus announcement, as well as the lack of details on the device itself, we’re not expecting it to launch in Australia until both 5G networks are up and running later this year.
This post was originally published on February 24 at 09:00.
[referenced url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2019/02/surprise-samsung-galaxy-s10-5g-will-be-exclusive-to-telstra/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/5g-410×231.jpg” title=”Surprise, Samsung’s 5G Galaxy S10 Will Be Exclusive To Telstra” excerpt=”Back in January, Telstra announced that it had made exclusive 5G deals with some of the world’s biggest phone manufacturers. The telco wouldn’t say who with, but the assumption was that Samsung would be first off the mark. In a move that has shocked approximately no one, it has now been confirmed that Telstra will be the first to sell the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G.”]