The first 5G laptop is finally here: the Lenovo Flex 5G, first announced at CES in January, will be available this Thursday (June 18) from Verizon Lenovo claims that it can be used for up to 24 hours on a single charge

The $1,399 Lenovo Flex 5G runs on the 5G variant of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx chipset The platform was first released in 2018 to bring LTE to laptops; other laptops with the 8cx chipset include Samsung's Galaxy Book S, which launched in January

That 5G connectivity seems to have been difficult for Lenovo to achieve, at least in the Flex 5G 2-in-1 form factor In a press release, Lenovo states that engineers and designers had to "shrink the 5G antenna to fit into a slim chassis, while enabling and maintaining 5G coverage no matter how users flip or fold the device into laptop or tablet mode The company stated It turns out that this success was brought about by a new patented 5G antenna system that supports both mmWave and Sub-6 GHz standards Lenovo claims this was made possible by the "industry's smallest 5G module"

Expect to surf the world's 5G networks (where you can find them) with Flex 5G (or Yoga 5G as it is called outside the US) Lenovo is working with EE in the UK, Sunrise in Switzerland, and CMCC in China to provide international support providing

The Lenovo Flex 5G is made of aluminum and magnesium and integrates a Snapdragon 8cx 5G processor and Qualcomm Adreno 680 GPU The laptop has 8GB of memory, 256GB of storage, a 1080p 14-inch touchscreen display, and otherwise very ordinary specs

The Flex 5G's 360-degree hinge allows it to tent and display in tablet mode in addition to standard laptop mode; two USB-A ports and one USB-C port do not require an adapter dongle; and a USB port is available for use with the Flex 5G's USB port At 3 pounds, the Lenovo laptop is neither light nor heavy

The Snapdragon chip in the Flex 5G means that it is an ARM processor-based PC, which means that compatibility and performance issues seen in the Surface Pro X and HP Envy x2, as well as other Windows 10 ARM laptops, can It contains all the risks

These are the same challenges that Apple will face when working towards the MacBook ARM, and will require a lot of work from developers For this reason, there are rumors that Apple will not announce its move to ARM until later this month

The Lenovo Flex 5G will be available for purchase through Verizon starting this Thursday If you are hesitant to pay the full $1,399 at once, you can pay in monthly installments of $5833 The purchase comes with a one-year Microsoft 360 Personal subscription