Samsung Galaxy S10 5G exceeds 1Gbps on Verizon 5G speed test

On Thursday, Verizon’s 5G variant of the Samsung Galaxy S10 has officially gone on sale starting at $1,300. One Verizon communications representative George Koroneos posted a speed test of the first fully supported 5G smartphone on the network.

The S10 5G surpassed 1Gbps speeds on Verizon’s network in a speed test posed to Twitter. With such speeds, Digital Trends’ Julian Chokkattu was able to download the full PUBG Mobile app in 26 seconds and a whole season of Sneaky Pete on Amazon Prime in 93 seconds using the Galaxy S10 5G during testing in Chicago.

This is 5G on the brand new Samsung Galaxy S10 5G in front of my hotel. It's crazy the difference a month makes. #FirstToRealTime pic.twitter.com/Syxc7HGrqn

— George L. Koroneos (@GLKCreative) May 16, 2019

Without a doubt, the speeds are impressive, and these are exactly the speeds that companies have been dreaming up possibilities for. With that said, 5G is still far from the perfect picture that companies painted for us.

As Digital Trends explained on its write-up, the 5G wideband does not reach very far. The nodes only have a range of about a block and a half – so it will take many small nodes to blanket coverage in a crowded city until the far-reaching coverage of 4G LTE towers. This also means that indoor coverage is practically non-existent and 5G signal is basically gone once you walk down the block.

It took 26 seconds to download PUBG: Mobile (a 1.86GB~ file) on the S10 5G. On a S10 Plus with a 4G LTE SIM, it took 2 minutes and 1 second.

I also downloaded a whole season of Sneaky Pete from Amazon Prime Video in 93 seconds on the S10 5G.@DigitalTrends @SamsungMobileUS #5G pic.twitter.com/qrqTcuP4NY

— Julian Chokkattu (@JulianChokkattu) May 16, 2019

Lower frequencies are much better at building penetration, and this is what T-Mobile advertises with its low-band 600 MHz LTE band (a.k.a. Band 71). As you go higher in frequency, both range and building penetration get progressively worse. Verizon’s 5G uses 28 GHz and AT&T’s uses 39 GHz so you can imagine that both range and in-building coverage will be a giant hurdle for 5G in the future.

As well, 5G currently does not support upload speeds, so in the beginning, Both the Galaxy S10 5G and the already-available Moto Z3 with 5G Moto Mod only support downloads over 5G and must rely on LTE for uploads.

This is only the beginning of 5G. In the next year, the state of 5G and wireless communications will have progressed further along than what we’re seeing now. Many companies have been releasing 5G compatible variants of their smartphones to support the future of wireless.

The Samsung Galaxy S10 5G can be purchased now on Verizon starting at $1300 and the LG V50 5G is also up for preorder on Sprint in the US along with the HTC 5G Hub.

Via 1 | Via Twitter