AT&T has announced that the Samsung S10 5G will be available on June 17th, but for now only for Business customers and 5G developers involved in the carrier’s development program will have access to it.
The 5G-ready phone, which first debuted last month only for Verizon subscribers who live in cities that support its 5G service, will cost business users $999. It will also be made available to developers for free at AT&T’s Shape conference in Los Angeles on June 22nd. Today’s announcement makes no mention of when consumers will be able to get their hands on Samsung’s phone, or how much it will cost when, or if, it does. It is possible that the Galaxy Note 10 could be the first 5G-ready device to be publicly available for all AT&T customers since it’s rumored to support both mmWave and sub-6 spectrum.
The Galaxy S10 5G (256GB) will cost around $1,000 on AT&T for what the company said is a limited time, the same price as the 4G LTE (or “5GE“) Galaxy S10 Plus (128GB). However, businesses will also need to be on the AT&T Business Unlimited Preferred plan to tap into 5G+, which starts at $90 per month for a single line with AutoPay. AT&T will also cap 5G speeds at 2Gbps.
The Verge’s Chris Welch tested it out and saw gigabit download speeds, which is a boon for downloading a bunch of videos very quickly. However, these results are good but they hinge completely on being in line-of-sight with a 5G node.
The report predicts the S10 will lose 65% of its value by March 2020.