The LG Wing can now use Verizon Ultra Wideband C-band 5G

Verizon announced this week that the LG Wing will be getting an update that will allow it to use Verizon’s newest 5G spectrum — over a year after LG left the smartphone business altogether. The LG Wing has been certified to use mid-band spectrum called C-band, an important piece of Verizon’s 5G network that delivers better than LTE speeds and wide-ranging signal. Verizon spokesperson George Koroneos says that the update started arriving on devices yesterday and will continue to be pushed out through the rest of the week.

That’s good news if you’re one of the few people who bought an LG Wing and, really, a testament to LG for making good on its promise to keep providing some support for its devices. But why is a one-and-a-half-year-old phone from a defunct mobile brand getting this update now, when, say, last year’s Google Pixel 5A isn’t? Because 5G in this country is still a mess — that’s why.

Their efforts to win the “race to 5G” have resulted in a confusing patchwork of network frequencies

Their efforts to win the “race to 5G” have resulted in a confusing patchwork of network frequencies that require the right hardware, software, and FCC clearances to use them. With so many hoops to jump through, manufacturers like Google can launch a phone that could support C-band but ultimately decide not to clear the final hurdle to certify it on the carrier’s network.

This isn’t something you need to worry about if you buy a new 5G phone through your carrier — it will almost certainly work with whatever 5G network they’re currently promoting. But if you have a 5G phone from your carrier that’s a year or two old, or an unlocked phone, it’s much less clear which networks they’ll support. LG may not have figured out the smartphone business, but at least they got that part right.

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