In Oct, we reported that the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a (5G) won’t be launched in Singapore. Die hard fans were eager to get their hands on for the two phones managed to get theirs during the Black Friday sales at a good discounted price.
Unfortunately, all these overseas sets, whether it is made for the UK, Taiwan, US or Japan market will only work in 4G here in Singapore.
For Singtel and Starhub users, there is the bonus of VoLTE working but it remains disabled for M1 and TPG users.
Google seems to have this policy that, if they don’t sell their Pixel in that country, they will not enable the certain services for that country or to a telco unless they have business dealings with them.
Likewise, many other 5G handsets out there do not work with the local 3 telcos that offers 5G trial services right now. Some will claim that future firmware update will resolve it To enable 5G, you will also need to subscribe to the 5G VAS.
Bear in mind, only buy those 5G supported phones listed on the respective telco websites. It does not matter whether you have the most expensive 5G handset in the world, if it is not ‘certified’ or ‘white listed’, you are just getting a 4G+ smartphone.