5.5G mobile phones are coming!

With the announcement of China Mobile's official commercial 5G Advanced (5.5G) network on the afternoon of March 28, the mainland and the world have officially entered a new era of 10 Gigabit network speed, and the first 5.5G mobile phone has also arrived - OPPO Find X7 series.

It is worth mentioning that as a new thing, what is the current actual application of 5.5G mobile phones, and what is the follow-up plan of mainstream mobile phone manufacturers such as vivo, honor, and Huawei in 5.5G mobile phones?

In this regard, the Securities Times e company reporter interviewed and learned that 5.5G mobile phone is a transitional product between 5G and 6G, mainly for 6G preparation, previously mainly used for research and development scenarios, at present, gimmicks, concepts are still greater than practical significance, and the current 5.5G mobile phone users want to experience the 5.5G network, must go to the designated network area to experience, because the 5.5G network is not sound.

5.5G was officially commercialized

Specifically, on the afternoon of March 28, China Mobile announced the official commercial use of the next-generation 5G Advanced network (5.5G) in Zhejiang, and OPPO Find X7 took the lead in supporting 5.5G mobile communications, becoming the first 5.5G mobile phone.

It is understood that compared with 5G, the new generation of 5.5G technology surpasses in terms of speed, latency, connection scale and energy consumption, achieving a 10-fold increase in network capabilities, and is expected to achieve the peak rate of downlink 10 Gigabit and uplink Gigabit, millisecond latency, low-cost 100 billion IoT, and air-space integration. It is also recognized globally that 5.5G is a necessary transition from 5G to 6G, playing an important role in "connecting the past and the future", including the basic vision of 6G and the exploration of technology applications.

According to the report "5G-A× AI New Era, New Opportunities, and New Value" released by China Mobile, 5.5G and AI large model technologies will promote each other and bring new development opportunities to the industry. For example, the combination of 5G and AI models helps call services evolve from communication connections to service connections.

OPPO believes that the unique AI call summarization capability of the Find X7 series AI mobile phones can provide call summaries and to-do list generation through large model capabilities on the basis of traditional call services, demonstrating a possibility for call services in the new era.

The reporter's inquiry found that the OPPO Find X7 series is not a new model just released, but a mobile phone that has been released on January 8, 2024, and is currently on sale on the whole network.

According to OPPO, at present, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Fujian, Anhui, Guizhou, Hainan, Hebei, Jiangsu, Liaoning, Xinjiang, Tibet and other provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions across the country have opened China Mobile 5G Advanced demonstration hall, users can bring Find X7 Ultra to the local business hall to experience the sci-fi 5.5G network.

5.5G phones on the way?

In addition, when asked when the 5.5G mobile phone will be launched, vivo told the reporter of Securities Times E Company: "We are also soon."

According to the reporter's understanding, at the Boao Forum for Asia, which opened on March 26, vivo exhibited several 5.5G and 6G technology verification prototypes developed by it, which received high attention.

vivo said that based on the R&D idea of "industrialization generation, standardization generation, and pre-research generation", in 2016, vivo Communications Research Institute officially participated in the formulation of 5G international standards by the international standardization organization 3GPP, and launched cutting-edge technology research for the next generation of mobile communication technology (6G) in 2018. The 6G comprehensive technology verification platform, 6G near-zero power IoT prototype, and 5.5G satellite Internet technology (NTN) prototype exhibited this time are the embodiment of vivo's achievements in 6G technology exploration in the past five years.

Up to now, vivo has successively launched dozens of prototypes such as 5G eMBB, 5.5G RedCap, 5.5G NTN, 6G synaesthesia integration, 6G mobile computing network integration, 6G near-zero power Internet of Things, 6G OVXDM, 6G OTFS, 6G data plane and 6G AI+ communication, and applied for more than 6,000 5G and 6G technology invention patents.

Up to now, no other mobile phone brand companies have responded to reporters about their company's plan to launch 5.5G mobile phones, but most mobile phone industry practitioners told reporters that the gimmick of 5.5G mobile phones is greater than the actual significance, after all, 5G disruptive applications have not yet appeared, and the difference between the use of 5G mobile phones and 4G mobile phones is not obvious enough.

In addition, some people in the mobile phone industry told reporters that earlier, the market has 5.5G, 6G prototypes, which were mainly laboratory products for research and development scenarios, 5.5G mobile phones are mainly products prepared for 6G, and the market has never appeared 4.5G or 3.5G mobile phones before, similar products are a transitional product.

The industry chain is actively preparing for 5.5G

It should be pointed out that at present, domestic and foreign operators and equipment suppliers are actively participating in the construction of 5.5G networks, and 2024 is regarded as the first year of 5.5G commercialization.

Mainland operators have deployed 5.5G pilot networks in more than 20 provinces in China, and China Mobile is currently at the forefront of the three major domestic operators. At the 2024 Mobile World Congress (MWC2024), China Mobile released a 5G-A commercial plan: in 2024, it will launch 5G-A commercial deployment in more than 300 cities, and strive to achieve full commercial use of 5G-A by the end of 2026; foreign operators such as AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, etc. are also actively participating in 5.5G trials and deployments; Equipment suppliers such as ZTE are also developing and manufacturing 5.5G devices, with plans to launch commercial devices in 2024.

On March 8, the Minister of Industry and Information Technology also said that it would build 5G, computing power and other information facilities in advance, strengthen 5G evolution, support the development of 5G-A, and increase 6G technology research and development.

China Merchants Securities released a research report saying that "2024 is the first year of 5.5G commercialization" has become an industry consensus, 5.5G can bring a more immersive metaverse interactive experience with excellent performance such as latency, speed, and mobility, comprehensively improve the comprehensive capabilities of the existing industrial Internet, and accelerate the formation of new quality productivity; Safety supervision and other comprehensive guarantees, the first year of 5.5G has officially begun, and the industrial ecology is ready to go.