Samsung have released their 5G Galaxy S10 in Korea and LG were set to be right behind them with a release tomorrow but they have now postponed that launch which will most likely have repercussions for its Telstra release date.
LG have stated that they have had to postpone the launch to “concentrate on the completeness of 5G smartphone in order to enhance customer satisfaction” (according to Google Translate). According to LG’s press release they are still working with Qualcomm and the local carriers to improve their 5G service with respect to software, hardware and network – that seems to be everything.
Apparently users of the Samsung S10 5G in Korea are complaining about connectivity issues when switching from 4G to 5G (we had the same issue when 4G was first introduced) and LG did not want to have issues with theirs in people’s hands.
We suspect that LG are having the same issues with the quality of the 5G connection and it’s switching between 4G and 5G. Telstra told Ausdroid at MWC that this was a tricky process and that handover was something they were focusing strongly on.
You would expect that Telstra would have several LG V50 ThinQ 5G devices sitting on their testing bench and they would be running them through a barrage of protocols to ensure seamless operation that we expect from Australia’s largest network. If Korea cannot get it fully functional yet you would expect that Telstra may be having issues as well and as such the launch of it locally will be pushed back.
We were expecting the LG V50 ThinQ 5G to be possibly the first 5G phone on the Telstra network, arriving before the end of the financial year and while this may still be possible you can’t help but think it may be a bit longer. Whether the other manufacturers of Telstra 5G phones, Samsung and OPPO, are having the same issues is unknown but it seems likely.
It is unlikely Telstra will release any of them to the public before they are 100% ready and we should be grateful for that. We have survived without 5G for quite a while so waiting a couple more months should not faze anyone.
