5G explainer: how new network is different and how it will change the mobile web experience
- Fifth-generation mobile networking offers possibilities including 8K streaming, driverless cars and instant text and speech translation
- Phone makers including Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo showed 5G handsets at the CES tech convention in Las Vegas
You’ve heard of 5G, but do you know what it’s actually for? The latest edition of CES (Consumer Electronics Show), a major annual technology convention held in Las Vegas, offered some answers last week.
5G is all about super fast connectivity. So any digital task that requires speed – for data to be collected by a smartphone, sent away for analysis, then received back, for instance – will change completely.
Streaming high quality video to social media will take off, just as FaceTime did with 4G. Instant translation of text and speech will be online and easy, allowing anyone, anywhere that speaks any language to seamlessly communicate.
Augmented reality could also become more common, because pointing your phone at something will instantly yield something useful. Face and object recognition could make it possible to point a phone at a horse race and for each animal and rider to be labelled.
Belgian company Mimesys even had a demo at CES of holographic meetings using Magic Leap’s mixed reality headsets. That’s something US telecoms company AT&T is also experimenting with on entertainment, suggesting that films, shows and games “could follow you out of the stores and onto the streets or into your home”.
