ZTE will showcase a gigabit phone at MWC

Original post, February 16: 5G is one of the latest buzzwords in the mobile world, as carriers and OEMs alike take baby steps towards a blazing fast post-LTE future. Just last year Qualcomm launched a gigabit LTE-capable chip and the first gigabit LTE network was set live in January of this year in Australia. Even AT&T is taking steps towards faster “pre-5G”, with plans for its 5G Evolution network this year.

What about actual phones that support ultra fast near-5G speeds, when are they coming? That’s exactly what ZTE plans to show us at MWC, which is now only about a week away.

Ahead of MWC, ZTE has announced that it will be revealing the rather unimaginatively named ZTE Gigabit Phone at MWC. The company says the phone will be able to handle “360-degree VR, 4K video, and instant cloud storage”. Of course that’s about all ZTE is saying about the phone at the moment. There’s no word on the other specs, the availability, or even what networks/carriers they are partnering with to make this phone’s promised gigabit speeds possible.

If we had to take a guess, the ZTE Gigabit Phone is more about showing off and teasing the technology to consumers, while partnering with carriers for testing it on next-gen networks. That’s not to say they won’t also launch the phone for consumer use, but we imagine such a launch will be pretty limited. Again, that’s just speculation on our part. Regardless, ZTE is taking an important step forward that we’re sure more OEMs will follow in the near future.

Are you excited to see what ZTE has in store with this phone? Do you think we really need such high speeds or are you perfectly content with 4G LTE as it stands?