5G is certainly the telecom topic of the coming months and years. But technological time is not marketing time. Operators are fighting with press releases to discuss their tests (necessarily successful) and their full- scale experiments . Everyone wants to be the first to get started.

Same on the manufacturers side. Even if the commercial reality of the 5G will not arrive before 2019-2020 (according to the countries) the communication goes well, between the thundering announcements (“we will be first, you will see) and the announcements a little premature.

Motorola, owned by Lenovo, who claims to be “a leading innovator”, does not go out of his way: “Today, we announce the first 5G mobile device offering new possibilities to watch videos, connect home appliances, work remotely or play in AR and VR. “Motorola partnered with Qualcomm to achieve this industry milestone using the Snapdragon X50 modem and millimeter-wave components.”

What is it really about? Asked following this somewhat opaque communication, Motorola has provided us with some clarifications that limit the scope of this announcement.

This announcement is for the moment only the United States and only the operator Verizon (which will launch the 5G in 2019 in 3 to 5 cities in fixed and mobile mode)
It is not a smartphone but a mod that just connect to the Moto z3 (and by itself for the moment), this mod will be equipped with a SIM card and a 5G modem chip from Qualcomm

This product will not be available in Europe “at the moment”: “We have communicated on it in Europe to reinforce the innovation of Motorola”, we explain it
It is really about occupying the media field.

Talking about imminent launch is somewhat exaggerated. For Qualcomm, do not rely on 5G smartphones before mid-2019. We also interviewed the technical director of Orange on the issue, and for him, the manufacturers still have work.

“The manufacturers are trying to demonstrate that they will be ready in the second half of 2019 with terminals that support the first release of 5G.But there is still work, especially on the issues of optimization of consumption”, we said Benatar. The main problem is the impact of the use of 5G on the battery, impact for the moment very important.