Is my motivation to pursue a PhD in Wireless Communications valid?

Hello,

I am currently an MS student at an R1 university in the US and have recently been offered to convert my MS to a PhD under a professor who is looking for his first batch of PhD students. He is a research faculty member and not (yet) on the tenure track. As a result, he has extended the opportunity for me to pick a co-advisor of my choice at the university.

The thing is that one of my main motivations to do my MS under this professor was because he is a strong supporter of doing practical research. As a result, I am doing lots of research where I can tinker with hardware and software rather than just running endless simulations and analysis. I have been doing a good job with this. However, with a PhD I understand that a lot of the work, however practical will involve a lot of theoretical analysis and therefore, I'm unsure what my motivations should be. I am quite excited at the prospect of working on a dedicated time towards a single area in my area of work. However, I'm not sure how to get around it - especially with an advisor who is not very experienced as a PhD advisor.

Any points would help in how to think about this.