Whether you're in a rural or urban area in a developing or developed country, you'll likely be able to connect to a 3G or 4G cellular network. 5G is getting more and more popular with each passing day, but it's yet to have very wide adoption, especially outside first-world countries.
Despite this, 5G-Advanced, also called 5.5G or 5G-A, is in the works, with limited cities in China already running it, and more countries and cities expected to follow in 2024. To keep up with this, we're already seeing the first set of phones to support this, and Vivo has just announced several to gain 5G-A support through an OTA update.
The Vivo X Fold 3, iQOO 12, And X100 Series Of Devices Will Support 5.5G
Vivo has announced via its official Weibo account that an OTA update coming this month will bring support for 5G-Advanced to the Vivo X Fold 3 and Vivo X100 series of devices. 5G-Advanced is the next step, in terms of speed and stability, offering a theoretical limit of 10 Gbps and 1 Gbps download and upload speeds respectively, which is a lot faster than what 5G offers.
Currently, the only country that seems to have an operational 5.5G cellular network is China, on the China Mobile network. Tests are ongoing, but by the end of the year, the network expects to extend 5.5G to over 300 countries, so it makes sense for Chinese manufacturers to get ahead of the wave by ensuring support for 5.5G this far out.
While the X Fold 3, X100, and their respective Pro models will be getting a 5.5G update, it also looks like we can expect to see faster internet speeds on other Vivo phones, namely the iQOO 12 series and the iQOO Neo9 series. It's not too certain since the original post is in Chinese, but it looks like we can expect all the devices to receive the update this month.
The Oppo Find X7 Series Will Be The First To Support This Wireless Standard
Vivo is fast with its plans to “activate” 5.5G on its smartphones, but another mobile company beat them to the punch, and that was Oppo, with its Find X7 series of smartphones.
The Oppo Find X7 phones will be the first to receive an update to put them on 5G-Advanced. Similar to the Vivo phones that will support it, the relevant Oppo devices will get it through an OTA update.
Don't Worry: Your Flagship Probably Has The Hardware For 5G-Advanced
The reason why these companies are all able to push out updates for 5G-A is because the chipsets in the phones already have modems that support this cutting-edge communication standard. The two chipsets that support 5G-Advanced in these phones are the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and the MediaTek Dimensity 9300.
However, phones like the vanilla Vivo X Fold 3, iQOO Neo 9, and iQOO Neo 9 Pro all run on Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processors. By the looks of things on paper, these phones should not be able to work with 5.5G, but Vivo claims it will be bring the tech to them, so we'll wait and see. Either way, if you have a smartphone on a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 or a MediaTek Dimensity 9300, you'll certainly be open for 5.5G support in the future.
