LG’s V50 ThinQ 5G launch was supposed to be the direct rival to Samsung Galaxy S10 5G. Originally scheduled to release on Friday, April 19th, LG has just announced in a press release that LG V50 5G launch is going to be delayed in its home country of South Korea.
After discussions with the local carriers in South Korea, who feel that the launch should wait until the 5G networks become more “stable”, LG took a decision to halt the launch of LG V50 5G launch until further notice. LG is also reportedly “concentrating on completeness” of the device, working closely with Qualcomm and local carriers to improve the quality of the phone.
This could turn out to be in LG’s favor in the long run, looking at the amount of Samsung Galaxy S10 users that are complaining about “severe connectivity” issues when switching between 4G and 5G networks. With 5G still being an experimental technology that hasn’t been implemented globally (just yet), people have been wary about switching to 5G even as OEMs have been working hard to push out as many 5G enabled devices as possible.
With the delay in the launch of LG V50 5G in South Korea, it is not clear what this announcement could mean for the phone’s US launch.
What we know as of now is that the phone will launch exclusively with Sprint in the spring, before being released with Verizon in the summer. Even if the delay is justified, LG doesn’t have long to overcome the phone’s issue with the Sprint’s 5G network launch due to go live in May.
Although a little disappointing, LG releasing a flawed device (or a device which has flawed network capabilities) isn’t something that they can afford at this time. Delaying maybe the best course of action at the moment, until the 5G network is fixed with modem suppliers and carriers if LG is looking to be a worthy competitor to Galaxy S10 5G.
