5G PCs and laptops will be here by the end of next year
High-five
There have been plenty of 4G-enabled laptops and tablets over recent years, allowing you to get online wherever you go using a mobile SIM card, but now Intel have pledged that we'll start to see super-fast 5G devices go on sale by the end of next year.
Dell, HP, Lenovo and Microsoft will all have devices with Intel XMM 8000 series 5G modems inside them during the second half of 2019, according to Intel, with the first due to be shown off at this year's Mobile World Congress (MWC) show that takes place in Barcelona next week.
MWC is very much the E3 of the mobile phone world, where all of this year's big flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S9 and such will be making their worldwide debut. This means it's also a good place to talk about new mobile phone network standards, with 5G having been a hot topic for some years now. While 5G has yet to be rolled out on any kind of major national scale, it's something that's very much on its way, and will hopefully deliver faster phone speeds at a much greater capacity than what's currently available on regular old 4G.
The 5G PC at MWC, meanwhile, will be a detachable two-in-one hybrid laptop with an 8th Gen Coffee Lake Core i5 processor inside, says Intel, who will be demonstrating how you can livestream video over a 5G network.
That might not sound particularly exciting, but Intel also say that 5G could potentially allow for untethered VR from anywhere in the world, as well as ultra quick download speeds wherever you are, allowing you to pull down 250MB files in a matter of seconds. They even go on suggest you could use 5G to, and I quote, "continue participating in a multiplayer game as you ride in an autonomous vehicle on the way to class." A bit far-fetched for most of us, perhaps (not to mention entirely unsafe and probably astronomically expensive given current contract prices), but that's the kind of thing 5G will be capable of handling.
"Intel is investing deeply across its wireless portfolio and partners to bring 5G-connected mobile PCs to market, with benefits for users, like high-quality video on-the-go, high-end gaming, and seamless connections as users traverse Wi-Fi and cellular networks," the CPU giant said in a statement. "With 5G’s critical speeds and capacity, Intel will help to open the door to new experiences hardly imaginable today, and make connecting online from anywhere, anytime the norm."
Here's a little teaser video to whet your appetite:
