Sony Xperia XZ Premium is the first smartphone capable of gigabit LTE speeds, not Samsung Galaxy S8

by Sohrab Osati | Mar 29, 2017 | 6 comments
Sohrab Osati

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The tech racquet woke up to some explosive news today – Samsung is officially ready to announce their nearly 90% leaked Galaxy S8 and with it comes the usual fanfare, like taking credit for things which they’re clearly not the first at. Chaim Gartenberg writes the following for The Verge:

 The Galaxy S8 is going to officially be one of the first smartphones on the market that’s theoretically capable of hitting gigabit LTE speeds, per a new video from T-Mobile showing off Samsung’s newest smartphone hitting some seriously fast speeds in a test (albeit in a lab). 

“One of the first” is certainly accurate, seeing how the S8 isn’t the first phone capable of this which makes their headline of

 The Galaxy S8 will be the first smartphone capable of gigabit LTE speeds 

even more baffling as the two contradict each other. Chaim goes on to write:

 It’s news that makes a lot of sense, given that we’ve known for a while that Qualcommn’s latest Snapdragon 835 chip (which is exclusive to Samsung until April) would feature its new X16 LTE modem and is the company’s first chipset to be theoretically capable of gigabit speeds (what’s known as LTE Category 16). Additionally, Samsung just announced last month at Mobile World Congress that its own Exynos 9 Series 8895 chip — which will be used in the Galaxy S8 in some markets — was also capable of gigabit speeds. 

Now where have I heard about a phone that offers LTE (4G) Cat16 with Gigabit-class speeds? I feel like it must be some form of Premium device, seeing how bleeding edge that technology is. Nope, for the life of me, I can’t remember a phone, which was unveiled at MWC, where Samsung announced the Exynos 9 Series 8895 chip, having gigabit LTE.

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Of course as we know, the media has a short attention span and this is what happens as I’ve argued countless times when you announce a phone in February that won’t arrive till June. By the time the Xperia XZ Premium gets into customer hands, the S8 will have been on sale for a month and the next iPhone will be arriving a few months later. Still, it would be nice for The Verge to get their facts straight.