5G is coming so soon, you wouldn’t even believe it. So say the infrastructure lobby, touting gigabit speeds for live mixed reality applications and movies downloaded in seconds. That may all be fine and dandy, but the hype campaign for the run-up to network launch seems pretty overdone.

Verizon, Qualcomm and Motorola all together launched the Moto Z3 as the first (and perhaps the only) “5G-upgradeable” phone a couple weeks ago. Now we’re hearing that Sprint and LG are teaming together to bring “the first mobile 5G smartphone in the U.S.” sometime in the first half of 2019.

No details about the device itself were mentioned, just that vague timeframe. The “LG G8” moniker is our guess at what it will be called, based on history.

For LG, it’s a big win against rival Samsung as the latter had announced yesterday that it would not have a 5G phone for the winter and spring.

Considering that the fourth-place national carrier looks to be financially well behind the competition in growing its 5G grid, it seems like any first that can be boasted about will help its consumer positioning. Even as Sprint’s capital plan grows, it will still face the behemoths of AT&T, Verizon and, if their merger does not go through, T-Mobile.