Orange and Dell test first 5G laptop in Paris

As a part of their ongoing edge computing partnership, Dell and Orange announced jointly this Friday the first successful field test of a laptop on Orange's 5G network. The laptop in question is Dell's upcoming Latitude 9510, a unit revealed at CES this year. The test was conducted in Paris, with over 900 Mb/s of reported download bandwidth, about 20 times that of 4G. This will be the first of what Dell and Orange hope to be many such devices equipped with 5G in 2020 and beyond.

Orange, one of the largest internet and cellular providers in Europe, continues to push 5G in more and more urban areas like Paris. Dell for its part has a clear interest in 5G not only to sell more devices to consumers, but also as a pathway to grow their edge computing business, as made clear in a statement by Liam Quin, SVP and Senior Fellow at Dell.

Today's announcement is a clear example of how 5G can impact our daily lives. Downloading a large presentation or training video could take seconds instead of minutes. Enhanced broadband communications and lower latency enables new usage models and users to complete tasks much faster than 4G-enabled networks, which creates and drives new business models and new applications, like augmented and virtual reality, cloud-assisted gaming, real-time language translation and image processing.

The Latitude 9510 not only touts cellular connectivity but also up to 30 hours of battery life (a claim yet to be independently validated). The laptop is the first in what Dell calls its new "ultra-premium" line of 9000 series laptops. It will be available for sale beginning next month with a starting price of US$1,799.