Globe Telecom has made history once again. Almost eight months after announcing the country’s first commercial 5G service for residential and business customers, it has launched the first 5G phone in the Philippines.

(Update, March 4: A comparison, you say? Read Watch: 5G and 4G speed tests on the Huawei Mate 30 Pro.)

Starting February 8, the Ayala-led telco will offer the Huawei Mate 30 Pro 5G to existing and recontracting subscribers. The plans are as follows:

• Globe ThePLATINUM 4999 Plan: P4,999 (around $98) per month, no cash out
  • All-month data surfing
  • 5 days of data roaming
  • Unlimited calls and texts to all networks, calls to DUO and landline (same area)
  • P2,250 ($44) of consumable allowance
  • Triple Globe rewards points (3 points for every P50 [$1] billed amount)
• Globe Plan 2499: P2,499 ($49) per month, P16,800 ($331) cash out
  • 21GB of data
  • Unli calls to Globe and TM subscribers
  • 150 minutes of calls to all networks
  • Unlimited texts to all networks
  • 1GB data allocation per month for 24 months for Facebook
  • 6 months subscription to Amazon Prime Video
  • 1GB data allocation per month for GoWiFi access
  • 1 month of Gadget Care

Huawei previously announced that the 5G version of the Mate 30 Pro will be available at Huawei Experience Stores for a suggested retail price of P55,990 ($1,102) beginning on the 8th. Each purchase comes with 50GB of Huawei Cloud Storage for the first three months and 1,200 Huawei points.

The Huawei Mate 30 Pro 5G boasts the same terrific features as the 4G model released earlier — from what it calls the horizon display to the big battery with support for 40-watt fast wired charging and 27-watt wireless charging. Except that its camera system is the highest-rated one by international benchmark authority DxOMark, thanks to optimizations made by Huawei.

What’s more, the Kirin 990 5G chip it uses is powered by 7nm+ EUV2, which translates to getting significant performance with lower power consumption. It supports both NSA [non-standalone] and SA [standalone] architectures simultaneously; can reach 2.3Gbps peak download speed and 1.25Gbps upload speed; and gets a huge boost in AI performance with the “2 Big-Core plus 1 Tiny-Core” NPU architecture.

Globe Telecom’s launch of the Huawei Mate 30 Pro 5G, the first commercially available 5G smartphone in the Philippines

“With 5G, in the beginning, people will say there’s not much difference between 20Mbps and 400Mbps,” according to Globe president and chief executive officer Ernest Cu. “Yes, there’s not much difference if you’re just doing Facebook, WhatsApp, and Viber. But eventually, someone out there will develop something that will require 100Mbps.”

He added: “A lot of the use cases of 5G are still being set. The idea of watching a video on your handset wasn’t in existence during 3G’s time, but it came around as the killer use case when LTE was brought to market.”

Besides speed, Cu said that another advantage of 5G for consumers is latency, or the response time of the network to the smartphone.

“Today, again, if you’re using basic stuff, you won’t need this kind of latency, which is essentially fiber-like,” explained Cu. “If you’re gaming, that’s a different story.”

The third advantage he mentioned is internet of things. “It’s something that consumers will enjoy eventually because 5G was designed to accept millions, even billions, of connected devices all at once to the network. It transcends the limitation of 4G.”

SEE ALSO: Globe At Home Air Fiber 5G plans now available

Market-research firm Counterpoint predicts that shipments of 5G smartphones in 2020 will exceed 270 million units. It expects the penetration rate of 5G handsets to increase from 1% in 2019 to 15% this year.

GfK, on the other hand, estimates that in 2020, more than 180 million 5G devices will be shipped globally, around 130 million units of which will come from the Asia-Pacific region.

Huawei Mate 30 Pro 5G specs

• 6.53-inch FHD+ OLED display, 2,400 x 1,176 resolution, 18.4:9 aspect ratio
• 7nm+ EUV2 octa-core Kirin 990 5G processor
• 8GB RAM
• 256GB expandable storage
• Quad: 40MP, f/1.6 main camera (OIS); 40MP, f/1.8 ultra-wide-angle camera; 8MP, f/2.4 telephoto camera (OIS); 3D depth sensor
• 32-megapixel front camera
• 3D face unlock
• Fingerprint sensor (in-screen)
• 4,500mAh battery with 40-watt fast wired charging, 27-watt wireless charging
• EMUI 10 based on Android 10
• Color that is available in the Philippines: Vegan Leather Orange

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