The Galaxy S6 could have a feature that’s useless to most people

We’ve started hearing quite a bit about the Galaxy S6, Samsung’s upcoming flagship phone, but most of it has been the usual selection of rumours and gossip about hardware and suchlike. Now, a new report claims that the phone will have a spectacular feature that is useless to pretty much everyone.

So what is this fabled feature? It’s an LTE Cat 10 chip, a new tri-band modem capable of receiving 4G speeds up to a theoretical limit of 450Mbps. For contrast, the fastest commerical 4G network on the planet is EE’s London-based LTE-Advanced network which has an upper limit of 150Mbps.

It’s worth noting that the current LTE standard (LTE Cat 6) is limited to 300Mbps, meaning most of us can’t take full advantage of it anyway. An extra 150Mbps bump is hardly a revolutionary advancement, but hopefully it’s an extra incentive for mobile networks across the world to improve their infrastructure and offer much faster speeds.

That’s already happening in South Korea, where the LG U+ mobile operator is developing a tri-band modem capable of reaching 450Mbps. Considering only people in South Korea would be able to take advantage of the new modem, it’s more than likely that Samsung will limit the number of handsets with a Cat 10 chip. Logically, it would be a waste of money sticking them in phones going to the US or Europe where those sorts of speeds are unattainable.

It’s a nice thing to hear about, but it certainly isn’t great hearing that it’s a feature we won’t be able to use for quite some time. Maybe one day.