The Pixel 4 was officially announced this week, and it’s conspicuously lacking a 5G model. The reason? 5G just isn’t good enough. Yet.
Brian Rakowski, Google’s VP of product management, explained that the Pixel 4 isn’t 5G ready because 5G isn’t ready for it, saying that the technology “isn’t quite ready for consumers.”
He added that while he has no doubts about it getting there eventually, the current state of it just isn’t up to scratch.
“It will get there, but now is not the right time to buy a 5G phone,” he said at the Made by Google event (via PCMag). “Both from a deployment perspective ” the coverage is not broadly available in enough places for enough users to benefit from it ” [and] from a hardware and phone perspective ” it’s still power hungry [and] immature.
“There’s work to be done there. We’re tracking it closely and we’ll bring a phone out when we feel like it’s a good time for users, but now’s not the time.”
OnePlus has expressed a similar sentiment, citing the lack of appropriate 5G infrastructure as the reason that its 7T series doesn’t have a 5G edition. [SlashGear]
This post originally appeared on Gizmodo UK, which is gobbling up the news in a different timezone.