5G Coming To $100 Phones. Should You Care?

If you have been hunting for a low priced 5G phone, then you probably already know they are priced north of US $140. Some good news here: that’s about to change.

Qualcomm, the phone chip maker, announced today a new 5G chipset called Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 (SM4635) targeted specifically, at low priced mobile phones.

Essentially, these are the phones that someone would upgrade to from a feature phone. Think itel A70, Redmi 13, Tecno Pop 8, Samsung Galaxy A05s and entry level smartphones.

The chips will be on some new Xiaomi smartphones launching for the Indian market later this year. Of course, these phones will their way to Africa and we’ll be able to buy them too.

This new Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 chipset is a toned down version of the Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 chipset which is already in slightly more expensive phones like the Redmi 13 5G, Poco M6 5G Plus (Poco is Xiaomi spin-off brand), and some Vivo Y series phones.

Here are the key features that phones with the new Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 chipset will have:

• Qualcomm’s 5G Modem-RF System with 1 Gbps peak internet speeds (theoretically 7x faster compared to LTE peak speeds)
• Ability for 40W fast-charging
• Camera quality of up to 84 megapixels
• Support for FHD+ displays at 90 FPS (generally brighter display than your average $100 phone)
• Dual-frequency GPS with NavIC L1+L5 for improved location accuracy (just me struggling with GPS accuracy in Google Maps on these entry level phones?)
• Ability to switch easily from 5G to Qualcomm Wi-Fi 5
• Support for Bluetooth 5.1

The geeks amoung you can download the spec brief for the chipset here.

Worth it buying a 5G phone in Zimbabwe?

It’s all good celebrating faster and better technology coming to low cost entry level phones, but the question remains – is not having 5G a deal breaker right now when buying a phone? Is this just hype you should cast aside?

We think having a 5G phone doesn’t matter much yet. It’s ok to have one, yes, but with all of 27 5G base stations the whole country, the number of times you’ll be able to get 5G is really insignificant right now. And it’s not like Zimbabwe is thriving economically that number will increase rapidly anytime soon.