The recently launched Galaxy A51 could make its way to South Korea equipped with 5G connectivity. According to our sources, a device with model number SM-A516N and 128GB of base storage is in the works. The regular Galaxy A51 sports model number SM-A515F, so the SM-A516N is likely to be its 5G-enabled Korean variant, just like the SM-N976N is the Galaxy Note 10+ 5G for the Korean market while the international LTE variant sports model number SM-N975F.
Just a few months back, we had revealed that China would get a 5G variant of the Galaxy A71, and if the Galaxy A51 5G does come to market, it would become the cheapest 5G smartphone from Samsung. It will be interesting to see how Samsung will go about adding 5G support to the Galaxy A51. The A51's Exynos 9611 chipset doesn't officially support 5G connectivity, so Samsung will probably have to choose between using its add-on Exynos 5100 5G modem and changing the Exynos 9611 to something like the Exynos 980 or even MediaTek's new Dimensity 1000 5G chip.
There have already been rumors that Samsung could employ MediaTek's 5G solution for some of its 2020 A series phones, so it's certainly possible the Galaxy A51 5G will be the first of those to use the MediaTek chip. Unfortunately, we don't know what the company will end up doing, although we believe we can safely rule out the switch to the Exynos 980 as that would considerably increase the asking price for the handset. The Exynos 980 will probably be seen on the Galaxy A71 5G instead, but even that is not set in stone at this time.
