by Tim Yu

Sprint 4G Rollout Updates

Wednesday, March 16, 2016 - 9:13 PM MDT

Authors Edit (8/25/16): According to a report, the LG G5 (and HTC 9) is indeed capable of 3xCA specifically for Sprint due to the intraband contiguous setup Sprint utilizes.

The spotlight may have been largely on the Samsung Galaxy for the past few weeks, but from behind the red moon, a new contender has revealed itself.

To keep it short, as per typical of a S4GRU teaser article, the model LS992 Sprint variant LG G5 had its FCC OET (Office of Engineering and Technology) authorization filings uploaded earlier this week. This is the 2016 flagship from LG for Sprint that will be available to subscribers soon. In keeping with S4GRU interests, we will take a look at the cellular technology side of the phone.

Supported Technologies

LTE Band: 2 / 4 / 5 / 7 / 12 / 25 / 26 / 41

CDMA Band Class: 0 / 1 / 10

GSM: 850 / 1900

WCDMA Band: 2 / 4 / 5

Pretty typical for a Sprint device of this time. It supports the standard Sprint LTE setup of Bands 25/26/41 and CCA/RRPP Bands 2/4/5/12. The FCC filings did not disclose international band support.

What many are interested in though, especially after the Samsung Galaxy S7 S4GRU article, is carrier aggregation combinations. Is the G5 a 3x CA device for Sprint? Well, the following excerpt from the FCC OET filing tells the story.

The LG G5 LS992 is not 3x CA B41 capable -- unlike the Sprint variants of the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge.

The G5 supports 2x CA intraband contiguous Band 41 and 2x CA intraband non contiguous Band 25. This is somewhat surprising, as both the G5 and the Galaxy S7 have the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC, which has the Snapdragon X12 LTE baseband and 3x CA capability on die. Most likely, though, the RF transceiver is limited to 2x CA and/or the modem configuration is different.

Barring a Class II Permissive Change filing or a refresh model for the G5, it appears the Galaxy S7 variants still hold the crown for the first and only 3x CA B41 capable devices on the Sprint network.

But the G5 does hold one advantage over the Galaxy S7 variants for Sprint.

Note the S4GRU highlighted portion of the FCC OET filing.

Yes.

This is the first VoLTE certified device for Sprint. VoLTE will not work right out of the box, however. It is a latent capability until the Sprint network activates VoLTE. Consider this is a hint, though, that VoLTE may become a user option this year.

To begin the wrap up, the FCC OET filings do grace us with an antenna diagram -- something that is increasingly hidden behind a shroud of confidentiality.

There you have it: an initial look at the cellular tech side of the soon to be released Sprint variant LG G5.

Source: FCC ZNFLS992