A few days back Samsung announced that it will showcase technologies at the Mobile World Congress 2016 that pave the way towards a 5G future. In partnership with Deutsche Telekom, it announced today that they have successfully showcased the world's first end-to-end 5G demonstration at Mobile World Congress 2016.
The end-to-end 5G demonstration involved two Samsung smartphones in tracking precise movements of a robotic arm from two different angles. The 4K UHD video was transmitted over-the-air without any delay by the Ultra High Mobile broadband (U-MBB) service which uses Samsung's 60GHz radio access technology. Samsung and Deutsche Telekom were able to achieve throughput more than 1.5 gigabit per second on each smartphone. The smartphones used in this demonstration featured 16 antenna elements which support beam-forming as well as conventional 3G and LTE networks. This ability to support multiple bands and technologies in a small form factor is one important enabler of 5G.
It goes without saying that in the future there will be Samsung handsets that support 5G networks. The company appears to be very interested in this network technology and wants to be a driving force behind it. Still, it's going to take a couple of years before 5G becomes mainstream, major carriers in the United States expect to start commercial availability of their 5G networks by late 2017 or early 2018.
