Your millimeter-wave 5G phone is going to need a new case, and materials company D3O—which makes case materials for Gear4, EFM, and Zagg—this week announced a new material specially made for millimeter-wave 5G systems, which highlights yet another problem with the fast, but thorny new 5G standard.
5G can work on any frequency. In low and mid bands, it works pretty much like 4G. But millimeter-wave 5G, the very high-frequency waves used primarily by Verizon, is different. Millimeter-wave (mmWave) is fragile enough that it gets blocked by bodies, walls, clothing, and, apparently, phone cases. (This is also one of the reasons mmWave won't kill you, unless it's by a light pole falling on your head—it can't even penetrate your skin.)
Verizon, and to some extent other carriers, have gone in deep on mmWave because it allows for very fast speeds. But it's been very hard to work with so far, with expensive antenna modules, complicated designs, and short radiuses from carrier towers. Right now, squeezing every possible little bit of mmWave signal out of a system is key, so making sure cases don't choke down phones is a real issue.
We saw the first "5G-ready cases" from Samsung a few months ago, but it wasn't clear whether that was just a marketing ploy. D3O just made it clear that it isn't. Regular case materials can reduce mmWave signals, D3O found in studies, lowering received speeds and increasing battery drain. So the company developed a sort of honeycomb material full of air bubbles, which reduces the density of the case and therefore improves signal strength.
"Analysis of the measurement data obtained found that D3O with 5G Signal Plus Technology achieved on average 37 percent less signal loss than its nearest market competitor and outperformed all benchmark materials," a D3O white paper says.
Now, let me make it clear that this is only a problem for mmWave. Most countries don't use mmWave yet. The UK? No mmWave. Switzerland, Germany, Italy? No mmWave. They may use the frequency down the road, but places and carriers that run mid-band or low-band 5G should be fine with an older-style case.
Qualcomm and the US FCC keep pushing mmWave. In Qualcomm's case, it's because it makes the only currently available mmWave antennas, and in the FCC's case, it's an easy-to-auction, unused chunk of spectrum that doesn't force the agency to make any hard decisions about moving existing users. But the technology keeps hitting new roadblocks, which makes me continue to be concerned about its short-term viability.
D3O's new material will appear in "5G-ready" cases from Gear4 this year, the company says.