With the Indian government pushing top smartphone markers for 5G compatible devices, global smartphone companies including Apple, Samsung, and Xiaomi are ready to fast track relevant software updates to their respective devices between the last week of October to December to enable support for 5G services in India.
Google, too, has announced its plans for rolling out software updates to Pixel devices without specifying a timeline. According to Xiaomi India president Muralikrishnan B, All Xiaomi smartphones support 5G non standalone (NSA) mode out of the box, while firmware updates to support 5G standalone (SA) will start rolling out to most of its phones by Diwali.
“For seamless SA support, we have already started rolling out the FOTA updates to select devices like Xiaomi 12 Pro 5G, Mi 11X Pro, Xiaomi 11i, Xiaomi 11i Hypercharge, among others. Most devices will start receiving OTA updates by Diwali,” Muralikrishnan said.
Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are the only two telcos at the moment that have launched their 5G networks in standalone (SA) and nonstandalone (NSA) mode, respectively, across key cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Varanasi.
Xiaomi's statement comes after the conclusion of a high-level meeting of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) with telecom operators, smartphone companies, chipset makers, and industry associations earlier on Wednesday to prioritize software updates to enable support for 5G services.
“In India, Samsung has the widest portfolio of 5G devices. We are working closely with our operator partners and are committed to rolling out OTA updates across all our 5G devices by mid-November 2022, enabling Indian consumers to experience 5G seamlessly,” Samsung India said.
Samsung's statement follows close to Apple's announcement that it will roll out software updates to support 5G services on iPhones in India in December. Google has promised to roll out software updates at the ‘earliest'.
“We are working with our carrier partners in India to bring the best 5G experience to iPhone users as soon as network validation and testing for quality and performance is completed. 5G will be enabled via a software update and will start rolling out to iPhone users in December,” Apple said in a statement.
Apple is said to be testing its 5G-enabled iPhone models – iPhone 12, iPhone 13, iPhone 14 series, and the iPhone SE (3rd-gen) with Jio and Airtel on their 5G networks. The update will be released in December after satisfactory user experience in call quality, video streaming, as well download and upload speeds have been achieved on the telcos' 5G networks.
