When are we going to see more local branded LTE smartphones?

Every time a local smartphone brand teases that they have a new smartphone coming out we speculate that it’s finally going to be an LTE capable device. However so far the only LTE-capable local branded smartphone we’ve seen is the Cherry Mobile W900 LTE. Unfortunately not everyone took a liking to it since it only packed a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8260A processor, 1800mAh battery, and it was priced out of the entry-mid level range at Php11,499. MediaTek has already announced that they have an LTE-capable octa-core chip in the works but there’s no solid ETA yet. The big question now then is when do we actually see affordable local branded smartphones that are LTE-capable in the market?

We did some snooping around and based on various sources it looks like we will only see the new MediaTek LTE powered local branded smartphones later this year. And when we say “later” we mean end of Q3 to mid-Q4. Since several insiders gave this answer to us in confidence we can assume that this is indeed the most probable rollout schedule for local branded MediaTek powered LTE smartphones. If you think about it this is actually very likely since other local brands haven’t even released their octa-core offerings yet. MyPhone has already announced the Infinity but it has yet to hit the market. So far we only have Cherry Mobile with the Cosmos Z2 and Starmobile with the Octa and the Diamond X1.

If you really want an affordable LTE capable local branded smartphone you better hold on to your cash for a while and be happy with whatever you have first. 😛