Oppo reveals 5G smartphone rollout

Chinese smartphone vendor Oppo has become the latest brand to announce a 5G smartphone this year, with four foreign telecom carriers among the first to sell its 5G model.

It latest 5G handset will use the United States semiconductor giant Qualcomm Inc's Snapdragon 855 chipset and X50 modem to latch onto superfast 5G networks, Oppo disclosed on Saturday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

Four carrier networks — Swisscom, Australia's Telstra and Optus, and Singtel in Singapore — will sell the unnamed 5G Oppo phone first, scheduled to be launched in the second quarter this year.

Shen Yiren, vice president of Oppo, said compared with the Chinese market some overseas carriers are rolling out 5G networks at a faster speed, so the company chose to sell its 5G smartphones in Europe first. According to Shen, the agreement with Swisscom was made the fastest.

At its product launch in Barcelona, Oppo gave details about another unnamed device set for launch later in 2019. It will use three cameras — namely wide, ultrawide and telephoto lenses — to take photos.

That means photos will retain much more detail and crispness even when consumers zoom in at extreme levels, Oppo said.