Perhaps one of the top tech innovations that have been generating buzz for years now is 5G. Even with the pandemic disrupting several industries, 5G’s subscriber base has continued to grow rapidly — up to four times faster than LTE. In fact, 5G adoption has been so prevalent that all premium chips released in 2020 were 5G-capable.
What makes 5G so great is that it brings groundbreaking speeds and better connection reliability and stability compared to 4G. This makes it ideal for online gaming, streaming movies, and downloading files — all essential tasks in today’s digital age.
If this technology has caught your interest, here are some of the best 5G smartphones you can get in 2021:
Oppo A55 5G
With a price tag of $245, the Oppo A55 5G is an affordable dual-SIM Android 11-based phone that offers 6GB of RAM and 128GB storage that you can expand to 1TB. It also has a side-mounted fingerprint sensor. The phone features a 6.5-inch HD+ LCD screen with 480 nits of peak brightness and 71% NTSC color gamut, which essentially contains the range of colors perceived by the human eye. The Oppo A55 also has a triple camera setup that supports up to 10x zoom and comes with a variety of settings — including Professional, Super-Text, and Ultra Clear. It has a 5,000mAh battery to keep up with the phone’s power demand.
Google Pixel 4A 5G
The Google Pixel 4A 5G is only slightly bigger than last year’s Pixel 4A, but has a second ultra-wide camera with excellent low-light capabilities — all powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G. At $499, it has a solid battery life with a fast-charging 3,800mAh battery pack that can also be juiced up via wireless charging. Plus, it boasts reverse wireless charging capabilities. The Pixel 4A 5G has a 6.2-inch OLED screen with thinner bezels and a 90Hz display compared to the Pixel 4A. On the storage side, it has 128GB, dual-SIM capabilities, and 6GB RAM.
OnePlus 8 Pro
The OnePlus 8 Pro signals OnePlus’ shift towards more high-end smartphone models. Priced at $765, it is equipped with a 3168×1440 resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and a fluid AMOLED display. It also features a quad-lens camera and supports reverse and fast wireless charging. A battery capacity of 4,510mAh is used to keep up with the power demand to operate these intricate features. Moreover, manufacturers have been able to solve many hardware layout challenges with a phone’s circuit boards, such as the growing miniaturization of components and designing PCBs to fit into small, irregularly shaped products, as well as avoiding voltage drops in complex PCB designs. This allows them to enhance functionalities and keep efficiency high, enabling the phone to distribute power more evenly and efficiently throughout the device while supporting its superior functionalities.
Motorola Edge Plus
The Motorola Edge Plus is quite pricey at $1,000. However, it has a 6.7-inch OLED wraparound screen that reaches nearly 90 degrees around the edges of the phone. It has an in-screen fingerprint sensor built into the front display. Moreover, the main camera has a 108-megapixel sensor that makes use of pixel binning — resulting in photos with less image noise even when shooting in medium and low-light situations. It has a RAM of 12GB and storage of 256GB and is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor and a 5,000mAh battery.
Asus ROG Phone 5
The Asus ROG Phone 5 is set to be Asus’ next gaming phone and costs $1,199 brand new — quite expensive, but its features more than makeup for it. The phone has a 6.78-inch AMOLED display with a 1080×2340 resolution and features sensors including fingerprint, accelerometer, and compass. It also runs on an Android 11 + ROG 11 OS and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor. Meanwhile, there is an option for 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. All this runs on a powerful 6,000mAh battery, on top of supporting reverse and fast charging.
All in all, 5G best smartphones have some of the most top-of-the-line features any user can get on a mobile device. Thanks to all these developments, consumers will surely have more phones to choose from in the near future.
