The vivo iQOO 5G will be the company's first
commercial 5G phone (after testing a vivo NEX 5G prototype). The company plans
to release the phone some time in the next three months and while it didn’t
reveal much in the way of specs, it did talk at length about the challenges of
5G.
The vivo iQOO 5G uses a Snapdragon 855 chipset
connected to an external X50 modem, as do most current 5G phones. 5G requires
four antennas, up from two for 4G. Combined with the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi that's
a total of eight – and it was quite a challenge to find room for them and
prevent interference.
That’s not all, having an external modem makes the
motherboard larger. And since 5G requires more power, vivo couldn’t just reduce
the battery to compensate and had to design a complicated 3D layout. All in
all, the phone was connected to a 5G network for a day and its battery was at
70%.
Qin Fei, the director of vivo’s 5G R&D center,
says that 5G networks will reduce latency, allow more devices to connect to a
network and allow carriers to increase data caps. The latency on the next-gen
networks can be reduced by 10ms, which will be a boon for game streaming
services and AR applications, as seen in the video. The AR glasses in the video
were actually part of the announcement – they use two 720p screens and offer 6
degrees of freedom. They can display AR games, 3D video and can be used in a
professional setting too. And they connect straight to the phone, no computer
needed.
As for data caps, Qin Fei believes carriers will
significantly increase the users’ data allowance – from 20GB to 1TB for the
biggest data plans. Data speeds can be 5-10 times higher on 5G than 4G. And
since a 5G cell could support more simultaneously-conneced devices, future
Internet of Things devices can connect directly to the network instead of
needing a bridge.
The 120W charging was demoed before, it promises to
charge a 4,000mAh battery to 50% in 5 minutes. A complete charge takes 13
minutes. We have a bit more details now – vivo Super FlashCharge works at 20V
and 6A.
It’s not clear if the vivo iQOO 5G will support the
120W fast charging. We expect concrete details about the phone to be revealed
as it gets closer to launch.