Samsung's new Galaxy S8 is technically the first phone theoretically capable of gigabit speeds. The phone, unveiled this week, feature Qualcomm's latest chipsets that are compatible with gigabit speeds on 4G LTE networks. T-Mobile was quick to issue a press release noting that because the phone supports T-Mobile's implementation of 4x4 MIMO, carrier aggregation and 256 QAM, the company using a pre-release version of the phone to demonstrate gigabit wireless speeds late last year.

Obviously in the real world most consumers won't see anything close to those speeds, courtesy of varied T-Mobile spectrum holdings in different cities, and difficulty with indoor signal penetration.

But the improvements should be notable all the same. And they'll arrive long before any notable deployment of fifth-generation (5G) wireless services.

"In terms of speed, if you think about a world where you have three-way carrier aggregation and you can do 4x4, and you can do both together -- which is the story of 2017 -- then you’re approaching gigabit LTE speeds, which is really exciting for 2017,” T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray said last November.

"We can do about 400 megabits per second on 4x4 and/or three-way carrier aggregation. And then the two coming together, you can start to double down, and as you expand your carrier-agg reach, you can move towards gigabits."

In addition to being the first device to support 4x4 MIMO, carrier aggregation and 256 QAM, the Galaxy S8 supports both Sprint and T-Mobile's implementation of High Performance User Equipment (HPUE), which lets devices use additional power to broadcast certain signals, effectively boosting both the range and capacity of some higher-frequency airwave bands.

Pre-orders for the device begin this week, with the first Galaxy S8 devices expected to begin shipping April 21.