It’s full speed ahead for Verizon 5G … The US is determined to have commercial 5G before for China (without using any Huawei’s equipment).
What a difference a few weeks can make. Last month, I came to Chicago for the launch of Verizon’s 5G network, which is now live both here and in Minneapolis. The inaugural 5G device was the Moto Z3 equipped with Motorola’s 5G MotoMod, and my experience — and that of many other tech journalists — was less than positive: 5G coverage was exceedingly difficult to find. Speeds were noticeably faster than LTE, but not wickedly so.
Downloaded Iron Man 2 from Prime Video at “best” quality in 90 seconds. You can see here that Verizon’s network occasionally fell back to 4G LTE. I’m right across the street from the 5G node. pic.twitter.com/TAh2YgmzwD
— Chris Welch (@chriswelch) May 16, 2019
But today marks the release of Samsung’s $1,400 Galaxy S10 5G, which will briefly be a Verizon exclusive before moving to other carriers. And now that there’s a real, proper 5G phone on its network, Verizon has ramped things up. Coverage remains extremely limited: it varies widely and block by block.
But when you find a good spot, it’s amazing. I just ran a speed test that crossed 1Gbps, and my mind is frankly a little blown. This is in the real world, where my iPhone XS Max is barely hitting 20Mbps in the same spot.
Source Theverge
