1.096 gigabits. 1.098 gigabits. 999 megabits. 941 megabits. ((Line of sight, < 200 meters) These are actual tests on Verizon 5G with a Samsung Galaxy 10 in Chicago. These are real people on real phones, three of them independent journalists.
10,000's have already ordered the Galaxy 10 5G, even knowing it will be rare to connect to 5G. Consumers want 5G; 400,000 Koreans have bought 5G phones in six weeks.
These results are about twice tests from a month ago and three or four times December tests. Almost everyone doubted high-frequency 5G would make sense. Neville Ray, CTO of T-Mobile, blogged the mmWave would only be a small niche. Craig Moffett, one of the best on Wall Street, wrote that the economics were extremely dubious.
mmWave still faces major obstacles.
Upload doesn't work yet. Indoor coverage ranges from poor to non-existent, often dropping 70% or completely non-existent. Even a tree can knock out your phone, as can a truck in the street.
Verizon has often claimed 600-metre reach but these tests were all under 200 metres. The cost of enough cells for wide coverage at 200-metre reach is close to prohibitive. At 600-100 metres, mmWave is far more likely to be profitable. Using data from Craig Moffett, I calculated anything less than 400-600 metres reach would be extremely challenging.
Sascha Sagan at PCMAG (first two pictures) has consistently done the best coverage of U.S. 5G, He
"got speeds up to 1.17Gbps with a clear line of sight to a cell site 500 feet away. ... I got 500-675 [feet], depending on the site. But at the moment, that isn't a real 675-foot radius. It's 675 feet, line of sight, with no visual obstacles—no trees, glass, or buildings. ...signal quality improves from 0-200 feet from the site, stays stable until the cell edge (which is generally 500-700 feet) and then just drops. This is the magic of beamforming, Verizon tells me.
Signal quality improves from 0-200 feet from the site, stays stable until the cell edge (which is generally 500-700 feet) and then ... just drops. This is the magic of beamforming, Verizon tells me.
Over 52 tests yesterday, I got an average of 27ms latency, with a minimum of 17ms.
a 204MB episode of The Flash took more than seven minutes to download, which was ... around 4Mbps?"
Jessica Dolcourt at CNET writes
"Four hours, seven cell sites and dozens of tests later, 5G data network and Samsung's Galaxy S10 5G achieved what I thought was impossible: they made me excited about 5G again. ..Speeds consistently ranged from 400Mbps up past 1Gbps, ...an almost 2-hour movie (Wine Country) downloaded from Netflix in just over 8 seconds. The second attempt took slightly longer, at 10.4 seconds."
Chris Welch at The Verge found "a mind-blowing experience. Going over 700Mbps is very typical ... the 5G signal is basically gone once you lose line of sight. But damn is it fast." George Koroneos is a Verizon tech who posted on Twitter.
