The iPhone 12 will only support 5G mmWave in the United States

By Joe Wituschek
published

Apple iPhone 12
Apple iPhone 12 (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

  • 5G mmWave will only be available on the iPhone 12 lineup in the United States.
  • The cutout on the side of the iPhone 12 is for 5G mmWave.
  • Other countries will only support low and mid-band 5G.

Reported by 9to5Mac, the entire iPhone 12 lineup will support 5G, but only the models sold in the United States will support the highest speed 5G mmWave. The report confirms that the cutout found on the right side of the new iPhone 12 is something that will only be found for iPhone 12 models in the United States and does in fact enable 5G mmWave.

Apple today introduced the iPhone 12 lineup with four new models, all of which support 5G networks for the first time. However, the super-fast 5G mmWave is exclusive to models sold in the US. In order to improve support for the new 5G network, the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro comes with a new side cutout that has confused some people.

9to5Mac also confirmed that only iPhone 12 models sold in the United States will feature the cutout on the right side of the iPhone in order to support 5G mmWave.

Interestingly enough, models with 5G mmWave will be available exclusively in the US, so iPhone 12 models sold in other countries will not have this cutout, as you can see by visiting Apple's website from other regions.

iPhone 12 customers will all be able to enjoy all three levels of 5G coverage, but keep in mind that 5G mmWave, the fastest of the technologies, is still limited to close proximity, meaning that most iPhone 12 owners will most likely rarely come into an area that has it.

Joe Wituschek
Joe Wituschek
Contributor

Joe Wituschek is a Contributor at iMore. With over ten years in the technology industry, one of them being at Apple, Joe now covers the company for the website. In addition to covering breaking news, Joe also writes editorials and reviews for a range of products. He fell in love with Apple products when he got an iPod nano for Christmas almost twenty years ago. Despite being considered a "heavy" user, he has always preferred the consumer-focused products like the MacBook Air, iPad mini, and iPhone 13 mini. He will fight to the death to keep a mini iPhone in the lineup. In his free time, Joe enjoys video games, movies, photography, running, and basically everything outdoors.

2 Comments
  • I'm eagerly waiting for mmWave 5G in my country. It really feels like it's gonna be the "real" 5G. Since we do not even have sub-6GHz yet though (it will be launched in December), I will unfortunately have to wait very long for mmWave 5G.
  • Even for us in the US it’s been a slow roll out. Really seems it will be used in specific scenarios or areas here so far (major cities, stadiums, etc). So even thought it’s “here” most of us won’t be using it just yet!