Now that 5G is finally a spec and not just a marketing speak, the Huawei giant plans to out its first Huawei 5G smartphone in the second half of next year. Meet the Huawei Mate 30 beast today!

The birth of the first Huawei 5G smartphone

According to a presentation slide shared at the Chinese company’s global analyst summit in Shenzhen, Huawei plans to debut their first 5G phone in the second half of next year. Before that period, the first Huawei 5G mobile hotspot will launch in the second quarter of 2019. What’s interesting is that both the future hotspot and smartphone will feature Huawei-designed modems to attain those 5G speeds.

The company debuted the Balong 5G01 chip at MWC last year, which is the likely model that will end up in the hotspot. But as of yet, we have no info on what the future smartphone’s chip will be. Given the H2 2019 release timeline, we assume that the smartphone in question could be the Mate 30. Provided that this year the Mate line jumps from 10 to 20 as the P series did.

If you look at the release history of the Mate series, we can expect a Mate phone to drop in the quarter 3 of 2019. And that lines up nicely with this 5G feature announcement. However, since the first 5G phone will be quite the milestone for the company, Huawei may elect to release the device under a new line. In that case, we would get both a Mate 30 and this 5G-capable device.

The 5G smartphones race between manufacturers

With the first half of 2018 coming to a close end in a few months, we can expect other smartphone manufacturers to start making announcements about their 5G plans. It wouldn’t be a surprise to hear that the timelines of other companies match up with Huawei’s.