AT&T, like the other major wireless carriers, is setting its sights on 5G. But in the transition period, the big blue carrier is making a big change. As reported on Friday by FierceWireless, AT&T is going to be changing the noticeable logo on supported Android devices from “LTE” to “5G E”. The change will mark areas where the carrier’s towers support LTE advanced technologies like 4×4 MIMO and 256 QAM. That “5G E” is meant to showcase “5G Evolution”, the network technologies that are primed to show off more advanced LTE connectivity, but isn’t quite a proper 5G network, either. 5G Evolution will be available in over 400 markets before the end of 2018, so if you’re an AT&T customer and you’re using an Android smartphone that was launched in the last year or so, you may see your LTE indicator on your notification bar change to 5G E before the end of the year. Just keep in mind that even if you do see that change, you aren’t actually using AT&T’s planned 5G network just yet. As noted in the original report, this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened, with potentially confusing labeling. T-Mobile and AT&T both rebranded HSPA as 4G before LTE rolled around. And Sprint branded its WIMAX as 4G, too.
