OnePlus CEO Pete Lau (PUNIT PARANJPE/AFP via Getty Images) If you want burdenless speed, you have to go 5G.
OnePlus understands this, now having brought 5G phones to T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon.
Its next step will be to go full-tilt with standalone 5G, the next form of the wireless standard, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau and company VP of R&D Kinder Liu said in an exclusive email interview.
“Standalone 5G will offer users the full power of 5G,” Lau said.
Last week, Qualcomm, T-Mobile, and OnePlus announced that they had achieved a bunch of 5G firsts: the first data session over low-band, standalone 5G; the first voice-over-5G and video-over-5G calls; and the first phone call on a 5G network with 4G fallback.
"OnePlus is proud to be the first global smartphone brand to connect to T-Mobile’s standalone 5G network.
This is an important milestone for the industry, as leaders in 5G research and development work together to create the next generation of telecommunications technology,” Lau said at the time.
OnePlus teased its first 5G phones at Mobile World Congress 2019. OnePlus jumped on the 5G train relatively early, announcing its first 5G phones at a Qualcomm event in December 2018.
The technology dovetailed well with the company’s focus on “speed” and “burdenlessness.”
Left to right: OnePlus 7 Pro, OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren, OnePlus 8 Pro, OnePlus 8 It’s also become a major center of investment for OnePlus.
It’s always a little mysterious how much of OnePlus’s hardware development is shared with its cousin companies under their parent BBK – that would include Oppo and Vivo – but Lau confirmed his company is spending millions on pushing 5G forward.
“We began our 5G R&D in 2016, and have invested almost $30 million to scale up and upgrade our 5G labs in both Shenzhen and Taipei since 2018.
Our 5G labs possess industry-leading equipment to support both hardware and software R&D, from radio frequency (RF) circuits, antennas, and multi-media (camera, audio, and display), to software research for communication protocol, throughput optimization, performance, power, stability and user scenario testing,” Lau said.
That's paid off; OnePlus was able to leap ahead of Samsung in supporting all of the features of T-Mobile's current 5G network, resulting in higher speeds on OnePlus devices than on Samsung devices well into April.
OnePlus What Is Standalone 5G?
The 5G experience in the US has been often underwhelming in part because all our 5G networks have had to use 4G systems for their initial connections.
That’s a system called “non-standalone.” It means 5G networks are dependent on 4G networks for coverage, and that their latency is much higher than it would otherwise be because of the 4G handshaking.
Standalone 5G can get to the sub-10ms latency we’ve been promised from 5G, and it has other advantages as well.
For instance, in the future it will allow “sliced” networks with guaranteed quality of service for different kinds of applications.
“With SA, users can expect a smoother and more immersive experience particularly in video calling and gaming,” Liu said.
Lau has speculated publicly in the past about how 5G will change smartphone design.
At Mobile World Congress 2019, he said local storage would recede in a world with general 5G connectivity.
"People are now concerned with the size of storage on their device for the sake of storing more photos, but [5G] will allow for more immediate cloud storage," Lau said at the time.
"That will allow people to no longer focus on whether the phone has 128GB of 512GB of storage, and it will enable a total change in our photography experience on the device."
But we’re years away from that; we still need local storage.
For now, 5G will probably be more related to phones’ newer, high-resolution cameras and high-refresh-rate displays – letting users upload huge photos without delay, or download multi-gigabyte games that take advantage of super-fast screens.
Better 5G software let the OnePlus 7T McLaren (bottom) outpace the Galaxy S20 Ultra (top) on T-Mobile's low-band network. “When designing 5G devices, we already have to account for a range of 5G-specific hardware considerations, as well as more advanced components that will make the 5G experience even better, such as the 120 Hz display of the OnePlus 8 Pro,” Liu said.
Current handsets with X55 modems – such as the OnePlus 8 series – will be able to work with SA networks, Liu said.
T-Mobile has confirmed this for me previously.
AT&T, which isn’t a current OnePlus partner, has said that next year’s Qualcomm X60 phone will be needed for standalone mode on its network.
“SA can come with a firmware update on existing handsets if the handsets are equipped with the X55 modem,” Liu said.
Dealing With a Hot Technology
5G phones may look just like 4G ones from the outside, but it turns out they’re full of complicated changes.
Take antennas, for instance.
Getting 4G and 5G working on one phone means implementing “nearly 50 different bands” of antenna frequencies, with the 5G ones taking up more room than the 4G ones, Liu said.
“A major challenge is squeezing a large number of necessary hardware components into a small, compact space,” Liu said.
5G phones also run hotter than 4G ones did, Liu confirmed.
This has been a controversy since last summer, when we saw millimeter-wave 5G phones based on the first-generation X50 modem overheating under stress.
Qualcomm, the carriers, and phone makers all pointed fingers at each other about that.
So far, we haven’t seen that happening with the newer X55-based phones, but we also haven’t tried to run them through a New York or Las Vegas summer.
“5G is much more demanding in terms of power consumption compared to 4G (approximately 100 ~ 300mA).
This brings about higher temperatures within a device that must be addressed accordingly to avoid thermal issues,” Liu said.
Recommended by Our Editors
Solving That mmWave Problem
One of the thorniest issues in 5G is what to do about millimeter-wave.
The high-speed, short-range technology Verizon largely relies on requires expensive additional antenna modules, which are a big part of why Verizon’s exclusive OnePlus 8 5G UW costs $100 more than the T-Mobile model, and also probably why the OnePlus 8 Pro doesn’t support Verizon’s network.
While Liu and Lau didn’t confirm that future OnePlus devices would include millimeter-wave, they came pretty close.
“We will continue pushing the technology forward with partners, like T-Mobile, Verizon, and Qualcomm, bringing multi-band devices to our users,” Liu said.
Notice the inclusion of T-Mobile in that quote, where this year’s T-Mobile phone didn’t have millimeter-wave.
Time is going to make millimeter-wave phones less expensive, Lau suggested.
“We anticipate that prices for 5G devices will come down somewhat over time as things like network infrastructure, technology and production become more mature, similar to what we saw with 4G phones,” Lau said.
There's a ridiculous number of antennas in these things.
This is the OnePlus 8. Yep, Voice Calling’s Getting Better
During the COVID-19 crisis, voice calling has skyrocketed as people try to connect to each other.
While lots of people are chatting over Google Meet or Zoom, many have also realized that the guaranteed low latency and quality of service on traditional voice calls makes them a little less uncanny than you get on video chat systems.
Moving to a 5G standalone core means better voice calls, Liu said, and OnePlus is on this.
“Due to the low latency of the new radio, new voice and video technology (EVS and H.265) over the 5G core results in better voice quality and video quality,” Liu said.
Phones that support native, standalone voice-over-5G (known as VoNR) will have an advantage in the new voice-calling world, Liu said.
Without VoNR, phones will have to fall back to 4G to connect their calls, “requiring more time and experiencing more drop-offs,” he said.
The OnePlus 8 is currently our Editors' Choice as an affordable 5G smartphone on both T-Mobile and Verizon.
OnePlus CEO Pete Lau (PUNIT PARANJPE/AFP via Getty Images) If you want burdenless speed, you have to go 5G.
OnePlus understands this, now having brought 5G phones to T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon.
Its next step will be to go full-tilt with standalone 5G, the next form of the wireless standard, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau and company VP of R&D Kinder Liu said in an exclusive email interview.
“Standalone 5G will offer users the full power of 5G,” Lau said.
Last week, Qualcomm, T-Mobile, and OnePlus announced that they had achieved a bunch of 5G firsts: the first data session over low-band, standalone 5G; the first voice-over-5G and video-over-5G calls; and the first phone call on a 5G network with 4G fallback.
"OnePlus is proud to be the first global smartphone brand to connect to T-Mobile’s standalone 5G network.
This is an important milestone for the industry, as leaders in 5G research and development work together to create the next generation of telecommunications technology,” Lau said at the time.
OnePlus teased its first 5G phones at Mobile World Congress 2019. OnePlus jumped on the 5G train relatively early, announcing its first 5G phones at a Qualcomm event in December 2018.
The technology dovetailed well with the company’s focus on “speed” and “burdenlessness.”
Left to right: OnePlus 7 Pro, OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren, OnePlus 8 Pro, OnePlus 8 It’s also become a major center of investment for OnePlus.
It’s always a little mysterious how much of OnePlus’s hardware development is shared with its cousin companies under their parent BBK – that would include Oppo and Vivo – but Lau confirmed his company is spending millions on pushing 5G forward.
“We began our 5G R&D in 2016, and have invested almost $30 million to scale up and upgrade our 5G labs in both Shenzhen and Taipei since 2018.
Our 5G labs possess industry-leading equipment to support both hardware and software R&D, from radio frequency (RF) circuits, antennas, and multi-media (camera, audio, and display), to software research for communication protocol, throughput optimization, performance, power, stability and user scenario testing,” Lau said.
That's paid off; OnePlus was able to leap ahead of Samsung in supporting all of the features of T-Mobile's current 5G network, resulting in higher speeds on OnePlus devices than on Samsung devices well into April.
OnePlus What Is Standalone 5G?
The 5G experience in the US has been often underwhelming in part because all our 5G networks have had to use 4G systems for their initial connections.
That’s a system called “non-standalone.” It means 5G networks are dependent on 4G networks for coverage, and that their latency is much higher than it would otherwise be because of the 4G handshaking.
Standalone 5G can get to the sub-10ms latency we’ve been promised from 5G, and it has other advantages as well.
For instance, in the future it will allow “sliced” networks with guaranteed quality of service for different kinds of applications.
“With SA, users can expect a smoother and more immersive experience particularly in video calling and gaming,” Liu said.
Lau has speculated publicly in the past about how 5G will change smartphone design.
At Mobile World Congress 2019, he said local storage would recede in a world with general 5G connectivity.
"People are now concerned with the size of storage on their device for the sake of storing more photos, but [5G] will allow for more immediate cloud storage," Lau said at the time.
"That will allow people to no longer focus on whether the phone has 128GB of 512GB of storage, and it will enable a total change in our photography experience on the device."
But we’re years away from that; we still need local storage.
For now, 5G will probably be more related to phones’ newer, high-resolution cameras and high-refresh-rate displays – letting users upload huge photos without delay, or download multi-gigabyte games that take advantage of super-fast screens.
Better 5G software let the OnePlus 7T McLaren (bottom) outpace the Galaxy S20 Ultra (top) on T-Mobile's low-band network. “When designing 5G devices, we already have to account for a range of 5G-specific hardware considerations, as well as more advanced components that will make the 5G experience even better, such as the 120 Hz display of the OnePlus 8 Pro,” Liu said.
Current handsets with X55 modems – such as the OnePlus 8 series – will be able to work with SA networks, Liu said.
T-Mobile has confirmed this for me previously.
AT&T, which isn’t a current OnePlus partner, has said that next year’s Qualcomm X60 phone will be needed for standalone mode on its network.
“SA can come with a firmware update on existing handsets if the handsets are equipped with the X55 modem,” Liu said.
Dealing With a Hot Technology
5G phones may look just like 4G ones from the outside, but it turns out they’re full of complicated changes.
Take antennas, for instance.
Getting 4G and 5G working on one phone means implementing “nearly 50 different bands” of antenna frequencies, with the 5G ones taking up more room than the 4G ones, Liu said.
“A major challenge is squeezing a large number of necessary hardware components into a small, compact space,” Liu said.
5G phones also run hotter than 4G ones did, Liu confirmed.
This has been a controversy since last summer, when we saw millimeter-wave 5G phones based on the first-generation X50 modem overheating under stress.
Qualcomm, the carriers, and phone makers all pointed fingers at each other about that.
So far, we haven’t seen that happening with the newer X55-based phones, but we also haven’t tried to run them through a New York or Las Vegas summer.
“5G is much more demanding in terms of power consumption compared to 4G (approximately 100 ~ 300mA).
This brings about higher temperatures within a device that must be addressed accordingly to avoid thermal issues,” Liu said.
Recommended by Our Editors
Solving That mmWave Problem
One of the thorniest issues in 5G is what to do about millimeter-wave.
The high-speed, short-range technology Verizon largely relies on requires expensive additional antenna modules, which are a big part of why Verizon’s exclusive OnePlus 8 5G UW costs $100 more than the T-Mobile model, and also probably why the OnePlus 8 Pro doesn’t support Verizon’s network.
While Liu and Lau didn’t confirm that future OnePlus devices would include millimeter-wave, they came pretty close.
“We will continue pushing the technology forward with partners, like T-Mobile, Verizon, and Qualcomm, bringing multi-band devices to our users,” Liu said.
Notice the inclusion of T-Mobile in that quote, where this year’s T-Mobile phone didn’t have millimeter-wave.
Time is going to make millimeter-wave phones less expensive, Lau suggested.
“We anticipate that prices for 5G devices will come down somewhat over time as things like network infrastructure, technology and production become more mature, similar to what we saw with 4G phones,” Lau said.
There's a ridiculous number of antennas in these things.
This is the OnePlus 8. Yep, Voice Calling’s Getting Better
During the COVID-19 crisis, voice calling has skyrocketed as people try to connect to each other.
While lots of people are chatting over Google Meet or Zoom, many have also realized that the guaranteed low latency and quality of service on traditional voice calls makes them a little less uncanny than you get on video chat systems.
Moving to a 5G standalone core means better voice calls, Liu said, and OnePlus is on this.
“Due to the low latency of the new radio, new voice and video technology (EVS and H.265) over the 5G core results in better voice quality and video quality,” Liu said.
Phones that support native, standalone voice-over-5G (known as VoNR) will have an advantage in the new voice-calling world, Liu said.
Without VoNR, phones will have to fall back to 4G to connect their calls, “requiring more time and experiencing more drop-offs,” he said.
The OnePlus 8 is currently our Editors' Choice as an affordable 5G smartphone on both T-Mobile and Verizon.
