Technolgy Rules: The Samsung S10 gets a 5G model

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

The Samsung S10 gets a 5G model

You saw this one coming, right? Last year Samsung announced it would be launching not one — but two — 5G phones. It only follows then that the first one would be a 5G variant of its flagship (a Note 5G, one imagines, is on the way for the second half of the year).

Never mind the fact that 5G is still a ways away in just about every market — Samsung’s taking an educated gamble that some percentage of its early adopting/cost is no object approach will get in early on the next generation of cellular technology. Samsung, for its part, has always been keen to jam as many features into a handset as possible, and the S10 5G is, without question, the most Samsung phone to date.

With the sole exception of storage (which goes up to an utterly insane 1TB on the S10+), the 5G is the smartphone for that discerning Galaxy fan who wants the biggest and best of everything, regardless of price. In fact, the company didn’t bother mentioning price at today’s event, which is not a particularly great sign for those hoping to pick up the handset without taking out a mortgage on their home.

Considering the fact that the S10+ starts at $1,000, it doesn’t take an industry analyst to extrapolate that this thing is going to be pricey. Samsung likely doesn’t expect to move a ton of these things, but when it comes to the company’s place in the industry, the optics of demonstrating that it can be first — or at least one of the first — to market with a next-gen tech is also important.

The 5G sports a whopping 6.7-inch display, putting it well above the S10+’s already massive 6.3-inch display. This is a device designed for showing off. As such, it sports a massive “5G” logo on the rear, just so there’s no mistaking it for a lowly S10+. Of course, that massive screen and the on-again-off-again 5G is going to be a heck of a power drain (though Samsung says it hasn’t run — or at least published — those tests).

So, naturally, the device also has a massive battery — 4,500mAh, to be exact. At the very least, that should be enough to ensure that the phone gets a full day of life.

The Samsung S10 5G will be arriving as a Verizon exclusive in Q2 and will hit AT&T later that quarter. Sprint and T-Mobile models will arrive later this year.