Motorola provides device support with snap-on 5G “mod”
Building on its planned commercialization of fixed 5G for residential broadband in four markets this year, Verizon this week said it will offer mobile 5G in 2019, and highlighted device-side support from Motorola’s moto z3, which has a snap-on 5G “mod” slated to hit the market later this year.
The news came out of an event in Chicago on Aug. 2., featuring speakers from Verizon, Motorola and Qualcomm, which provided its Snapdragon X50 modem for the mod, as well as millimeter wave modules described by Mike Finely, Qualcomm’s president of North America, as “really a technology and a capability that many people didn’t think was possible…We’re very proud of that achievement.”
Verizon Chief Network Engineer and Head of Wireless Networks Nicola Palmer said in a statement, “5G will change the ways we live, work, learn and play. It will touch nearly every industry sector, impact our economy in a profound way and dramatically improve our global society.” She highlighted the role of LTE as “the perfect foundation to bring 5G to market. As we like to say, we don’t wait for the future, we build it.”
According to Verizon, the moto z3 will go on sale Aug. 16 for $480 or $20 per month for two years. Pricing and availability of the 5G mod will come later this year.
The device has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, 64 Gigabytes of internal storage, a fingerprint reader and facial recognition, “all-day battery,” and a six-inch Super AMOLED display made of Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3. Here’s a full breakdown of the technical specifications.
This isn’t the first time Verizon has partnered with Motorola to pin a major network upgrade to a device release. In 2017 Verizon announced its gigabit LTE service along with the launch of the moto z2 Force Edition featuring Qualcomm’s Snapdraagon 835 and X16 modem which supports four-channel carrier aggregation including LAA, 4×4 MIMO and 256 QAM.
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