Sprint will carry one of Samsung’s 5G phones

Sprint will carry one of Samsung’s upcoming 5G-enabled smartphones later this year, joining rivals AT&T and Verizon. The company says the smartphone will be available in summer 2019, and it will also be compatible with Sprint’s existing LTE network.

In December, both AT&T and Verizon announced that they would be carrying upcoming 5G smartphones. Verizon was first, and it announced that it would be selling one of the phones in the first half of 2019. AT&T responded by saying that not only would it have that same phone early in the year, but it would also offer a second 5G phone from Samsung in the second half of the year.

5G is a new generation of wireless technology that’s set to offer faster speeds and lower latency than current 4G mobile networks, using different frequencies from those used by 4G LTE. Sprint has said this Samsung phone will offer 5G on the 2.5GHz spectrum via the Massive MIMO antennas it’s been deploying across the country, rather than the mmWave technology that’s favored by AT&T and Verizon (defined as being between 30GHz and 300GHz). The phone will support the 1.9GHz and 800MHz LTE spectrum bands for roaming.

The South Korean firm is reportedly working on at least two variants of its upcoming Galaxy S10 smartphone: one with a Qualcomm modem and the other with a Samsung-made equivalent. One of these is also rumored to be a “Beyond X” version of the phone with a 6.7-inch screen. None of the three carriers have confirmed exactly which model of Samsung phone they’ll be carrying.

Sprint stopped short of confirming that Samsung’s device would be the first 5G phone on its network, saying only that it would be “one of” the first after. The US carrier previously announced that it would carry a 5G phone from LG earlier in the year, and it also said it was working with HTC to develop a 5G “smart hub.”