Apple will not be the first to adopt 5G technology because of these three reasons

Apple has always liked to create new standards on its own, but has not been very active in following the standards of others.

For 5G technology, both operators such as AT&T and mobile phone giants such as Samsung and Huawei attach great importance to it, and have repeatedly emphasized the need to seize the high ground of 5G technology. However, Apple is the most stable among the technology giants. So far, it has basically not expressed any opinions on 5G technology, let alone when it will launch 5G terminals. So when can we see Apple's 5G devices? Today, foreign media AXIOS published an article saying that we will not see Apple release 5G devices in the short term.

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Axios also believes that 5G technology is very important. After all, in addition to major companies, countries such as China, South Korea, and the United States are also fighting hard to compete in the 5G era. However, Axios also believes that from Apple's history, they are absolute innovators in many fields, but not in the field of communications. In the previous 3G and 4G eras, Apple was at least one year slower than its competitors, and this situation will reappear in the 5G era.

There are three reasons for this:

First, battery life. Generally speaking, the first batch of mobile phones that support new wireless standards have terrible battery life, because they need to power new standard chips like 5G, but the first batch of 5G chips do not optimize battery and power management. The iPhone has always been very conservative in battery performance, and there were automatic shutdown and frequency reduction incidents in 2016 and 2017 respectively, which are all caused by shortened battery life. Forcing 5G labels may bring more battery problems.

Secondly, compatibility. Although Apple will not launch multiple iPhones at the same time, and only releases three new models in a year at most, it still has great pressure on research and development. A new wireless standard means many more spectrums in different frequency bands, and Apple needs to do a lot of customization and debugging for each network and antenna.

Other brands only need to launch a 5G "arrowhead product" to create gimmicks and seize the market, while other product lines are still developed according to the original plan. However, once Apple enters the 5G era, it means that not only all products of the year must support 5G, but also all products of the future must support 5G every year, which requires a long time of research and development and experience accumulation.

***, independence. Apple has always been unwilling to be held hostage by suppliers, and for this reason they even went so far as to fall out with Qualcomm, and in order to use both Qualcomm and Intel baseband chips on the iPhone, they even castrated some of the functions of Qualcomm's baseband, which shows how determined Apple is. However, if Apple blindly enters the 5G era, it will be 100% held hostage by Qualcomm and Intel, because only they are capable of providing 5G basebands.

At the end of the article, AXIOS believes that every communication revolution is a test for Apple. Although waiting a year for the new standard makes sense for Apple, it opens a door for competitors such as Samsung and Huawei. They will actively adopt 5G technology just to stay ahead of Apple in the 5G era.

Translator's note: At the end of last year, DigiTimes revealed that Apple will add Pre5G function to the 2018 iPhone. Although it is not 5G, Pre5G adds some 5G functions to 4G, so it can provide a 5G-like experience in some cases.