Samsung is playing a major role in the advancement of 5G technology. It’s developing end-to-end solutions which will enable mobile carriers to flip the switch on their 5G networks as early as next year. The company will eventually release smartphones that are compatible with those networks and one of its major carrier partners has revealed that the Samsung 5G phone will be ready in the “not so distant” future.

Samsung 5G phone

Park Jin-hyo, the chief technology officer of SK Telecom, has revealed that Samsung has made considerable progress in its 5G technologies and that it’s likely going to produce a 5G phone in the not so distant future. He made these comments in an interaction with journalists at the Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona.

“It is not so far for Samsung either in coming up with a 5G device,” he said. His comments follow the recent announcement of Huawei’s first 5G chipset and the company saying that it plans to launch a 5G smartphone in the second half of this year.

“Huawei excels in its technologies…While Samsung may not say much, it has also been making a lot of preparations,” Park said without offering any more details.

Samsung recently demonstrated a video call over 5G with Verizon during a major sporting event in the United States. It did so with a fully-functional 5G tablet prototype that was capable of handling multi-gigabit 5G speeds and even supported data session handovers between 4G LTE and 5G for seamless connectivity.

The company reportedly showcased its 5G modem prototype to partners behind closed doors at CES 2018. It’s expected to reach a theoretical speed of up to 5Gbps while being backward compatible with 4G LTE, 3G and 2G networks.

It’s widely believed that the Galaxy S9’s successor, which some say is going to be called the Galaxy S10, will be Samsung’s first 5G-enabled mobile device. One would expect the company to introduce such a major technological advancement with a flagship device so this isn’t outside the realm of possibility.