Don’t worry, ZTE has a 5G phone, too

Published February 25, 2019

There’s another name to add to the ever-lengthening list of 5G phones hitting Barcelona this week. ZTE just announced the Axon 10 Pro 5G, which is due out in the first half of 2019 — in China and Europe, at least. The States are a different question altogether, of course. ZTE hasn’t been quite the same political flash point as Huawei in recent years, but the company’s been subject to its own scrutiny from U.S. authorities.

Also like Huawei, ZTE’s got the marked benefit of building its own 5G networking equipment, which puts the Chinese smartphone maker ahead of much of the competition in terms of testing. At present, it’s working with carriers to ready its phone for the imminent arrival of the next-gen wireless tech.

In fact, the company used the kickoff of MWC today to showcase some of its own 5G tech, including a live presentation executed alongside Qualcomm. From this morning’s release:

The demonstration over 5G NR radio utilizes a real-world end-to-end 5G NR network built with ZTE’s commercial core network and radio base station equipment, as well as a ZTE 5G smartphone powered by the world’s first commercial 5G mobile platform—the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855Mobile Platform paired with the Snapdragon X50 5G modem, as well as Qualcomm Technologies’ RF transceiver and RF front-end solutions.

The forthcoming device also sports three rear-facing cameras, a U-shaped hole-punch bezel and what appears to be an in-display fingerprint reader. ZTE also launched the Blade V10 today. That handset features a 32-megapixel front-facing camera, because you can never have enough high-resolution selfies.