Qualcomm and Ericsson make 5G-NR call with test smartphone
Amidst a barrage of unending announcements of “5G firsts” that we have heard and keep hearing, there was a gem, announced on Sep 6. Qualcomm and Ericsson said they successfully completed the first over the air 5G-NR call using a test smartphone device, featured here.
The title of the announcement was a master piece of legal and engineering lingo. You can be forgiven for not realizing the significance of this feat because of the jargon involved. Let me break it up for you.
The announcement said:
“Qualcomm and Ericsson Conduct First Announced 3GPP-compliant 5G NR mmWave OTA Call with a Mobile Form Factor Device”
Quite a mouthful, eh?
First announced is a legal speak for “nobody has done this before,” but for CYA purposes, if somebody else has done it unannounced. I seriously doubt it, and would go out on a limb and say outright impossible. So, for all practical purposes, it is first of its kind.
3GPP-complaint 5G-NR means this is not some proprietary testing, but is using the full and approved latest 5G standard (Rel-15). This is the same standard that will be used in commercial networks.
mmWave OTA Call means this was not a simulated test in a lab somewhere, where the infra and devices are connected with cables. Instead, it was an over-the-air call, the way you would do in a commercial network, and that too using 39 GHz mmWave spectrum that operators in the U.S. will use for their first 5G networks. Here, I am tempted to remind readers that mmW was once claimed to be almost impossible in integrate in smartphones. But I digress.
Mobile Form factor device – This is the most significant part of the whole deal. The test used a device that for all practical purposes was a smartphone, the one pictured above.
When anybody hears about a first call or something similar, undoubtedly they visualize a bunch of proud over-worked engineers in a lab, standing next to a large fridge-sized (even small car-sized in many cases) equipments with hundreds of cables going in and out. One has to point out and explain which big box represents the network and which box is the device. The sight of such set-up screams that whatever technology is being tested is years away from getting in to the hands of real consumers in the form of a sleek Smartphone.
However, what Qualcomm and Ericsson demonstrated was far different. They used Ericsson’s commercial ready network equipment (which many operators are deploying), and a handheld user device that is a test version of a smartphone. Again, this device is not a fridge or car with hundreds of cables, but a test phone, in real flesh and blood that looks, feels, and works like a smartphone. Granted, it might be bulkier and lack the aesthetics of a glitzy new smartphone, mainly because the primary objective of such device is running slew of tests that the companies themselves as well as the operators want to run before commercializing. That means, it has it has open antenna ports, more ruggedized body to withstand the abuse of testing in the lab, in the fields by many people. Most importantly, it is not optimized for the look and feel but for functionality. Well, you’ve got to leave something to the OEMs to work their magic and differentiated themselves from the crowd. This is a standard practice for any device, be it 5G or otherwise.
All this means that we are not too far away from having a real working commercial 5G mmW 5G-NR smartphone. Remember, many people ridiculed/despised the announcement of Moto Z3 5G mod, and the publicity of Xiaomi Mix3 as marketing gimmicks. Well, when you put this Qualcomm, Ericsson announcement, what Xiaomi and Lenovo showed, and all the other chatter you hear about many other OEMs together with how confident the operators are, I am pretty confident that we are well on our way to get the prized 5G smartphone soon. Qualcomm has publically said they expect them to be in the market in the first/second half of 2019. My hunch is with 20 odd OEMs competing, it might be even sooner.
Another notable thing that happened around the same time (on Sep 4th) was the announcement of spec-compliant 3GPP 5G-NR call between Ericsson and Intel. Kudos to Ericsson for their balancing act between the two tech behemoths and arch rivals. It was evident from the picture they released that Intel’s device prototype is still in the “fridge” stage, which is still a remarkable step in my view, considering how late they were with 4G commercialization.
