Samsung could be bringing a more affordable 5G smartphone to the US, with the Galaxy A71.
It was already rumored that Samsung was working on a 5G version of the Galaxy A71 for the Chinese market. And now a report out of Sammobile is saying that it will also makes its way to the US.
The report did not mention which carrier(s) would be getting the Galaxy A71 5G, but it did say “variants”. Likely meaning that this could come to each of the four US carriers, or at least more than one carrier. It’s tough to say at this point.
A Galaxy A71 5G won’t hit the US until the second half of 2020
Don’t expect the Galaxy A71 5G to land in the US anytime soon though. Sammobile says it’ll likely be the second half of the year, if not later.
While many might expect for the Galaxy A71 5G to be running on a Qualcomm chipset – perhaps the Snapdragon 765 – it actually won’t. It appears that it’ll be running on Samsung’s own Exynos 980 chipset. Which is a pretty high-end chipset that has 5G support.
Though, if Samsung is bringing this to the US, it is possible that the US variants would be using a Snapdragon chip. That’s because Qualcomm has all of the patents needed to make a good chipset for CDMA carriers like Sprint and Verizon. One of the main reasons why Samsung uses both Qualcomm and Exynos chipsets in its flagship smartphones.
Samsung is also working on a 5G version of the Galaxy A51 – which is an even cheaper mid-ranger from the company.
Affordable 5G phones are coming!
In 2019, there were a handful of 5G smartphones released. The Galaxy S10+ 5G, Galaxy Note 10+ 5G, Moto Z4 with 5G Moto Mod, LG V50 ThinQ 5G among others. But the majority of these were pretty expensive. They were all over a grand – except for the Moto Z4, though it was close with that Moto Mod.
However, it seems that in 2020, smartphone makers are starting to turn towards cheaper smartphones for 5G. Qualcomm has announced a cheaper chipset in the 765 that does support 5G, so that is going to help make that possible.
We don’t know what the price might be for the Galaxy A71 5G when it does come to this side of the world, and since the Galaxy A71 isn’t here already, we have to look at the Galaxy A70. Which is currently priced at $349. It wouldn’t be too crazy to expect the Galaxy A71 5G to be around $500. Which is very affordable for a 5G smartphone. And that’s what is going to drive adoption of 5G. Cheaper, 5G-capable smartphones.