MrMobile goes hands-on with Motorola's "5G" smartphone

Before yesterday, I did not care one lick about the coming 5G smartphone revolution. After all, 4G speeds were plenty for my needs – and more importantly, I'd been there for the early days of 4G. Not LTE, mind you, but Sprint-served WiMAX: the wireless world's worst case of over-promising and under-delivering. The notion of going through that mess again seemed deeply unappealing.

That's probably a big part of why Motorola flew a bunch of press out to the company headquarters in Chicago this week. The company that essentially invented the cellular phone just announced the first "5G-upgradable" smartphone thanks to the magic of Moto Mods, and it wanted to drum up some excitement. With lab tours showcasing RF testing and guests from Verizon and Qualcomm answering in-depth tech questions, it had the desired effect on this geeky YouTuber: I'm much more excited for 5G than ever before.

That's not to say I'm totally sold, though. The Moto Z3 that serves as the platform for the 5G Moto Mod is one of the most forgettable phones of 2018; the Moto Mod itself is big and bulky and won't launch for another few months; and the 5G network that powers all this buzzworthy stuff is still in the very early stages of rollout. Add in some lingering disappointment about the launch event not quite living up to the hype that Motorola initially whipped up, and you'll understand why my tone toward the tail end of the above video leans more conservative than usual.

Click on through to that video to go hands-on with the Moto Z3 and the first 5G Moto Mod, make sure you take in Daniel Bader's in-depth take here at AC – and be sure you're subscribed to theMrMobile on YouTube so you don't miss the true 5G smartphone test when the time comes!