Huawei’s first 5G phone could be a power-guzzling beast, report claims

Huawei's first generation of 5G chips will reportedly consume 2.5 times the power of its current 4G chips, and require a 0.4mm heatsink made out of copper to keep cool, according to a new report.

The news of the power consumption was confirmed by Huawei’s CEO, Eric Xu, Digitimes reports. This is likely to make the first generation of 5G phones a lot bulkier, as manufacturers could be required to work to fit in the additional battery capacity and heatsink required to keep the chip cool.

The copper heatsink itself will reportedly be manufactured by Auras, and is normally reserved for laptops. Graphite tends to be the heatsink material of choice for smartphones.

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The Huawei phone itself hasn’t been named yet, but it’s expected to arrive in June 2019, which is a number of months before 5G is expected to launch widely across much of the world.

That said, there’s no way of knowing how bulky this will make the final handset, with there being the potential for Huawei to find space savings elsewhere.

The early-adopter’s curse

However, the company behind the Huawei P20 Pro is unlikely to be alone with tackling these kinds of struggles. First-generation hardware can often be imperfect, with manufacturers rarely managing to iron out all kinks right away.

5G will be no different, and we’d imagine that you’ll have to be very determined to make the leap from 4G to 5G within the first year of its release.

Read more: What is 5G?

However, those who are in a decent area of coverage, with a compatible handset, are likely to see fantastic speeds. It’s not just because 5G will be faster than 4G anyway, but also because there’ll be so few people on the network that they can enjoy having all the capacity to themselves.

When are you planning to make the jump to 5G? Let us know @TrustedReviews.