Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “You Don’t Need A 5G Phone (Yet)”.
Exactly ten years ago this summer I bought my first 4G smartphone, the HTC Evo, and the experience was less than perfect.. The phone was amazing, but that network was too new too thin and deployed at too high a frequency to penetrate buildings, very well.. So the end result was: I couldn’t use that new 4G network indoors.. You might remember a few months back. I tested Verizon’s 5G network in Chicago and found many of the same issues..
All 5G networks are new and the first bands Verizon is using for its rollout. Are many times higher frequency than even those already high bands that gave me such trouble back in’09.? That means they penetrate buildings even more poorly, even if they do provide incredible data speeds.. So what I wanted to find out was how much difference do a few months and a smaller city make if you wan na, make 5G work in real life To find out. I took the train to Providence, Rhode Island to test out Verizon’s new 5G network there.
And I did the filming the editing and some of the writing on a Galaxy Note. 10. Just to see if I could. ( soft techno, music ) The first step in testing, a 5G network of course is moving into a 5G phone..
So my fellow testers and I met up with our Verizon contact in Providence to temporarily trial, Samsung’s Galaxy Note, 10 plus 5G. Visually. It’S totally identical to the standard Note 10 plus, except the cool aura glow paint job is nowhere to be found..
Our coffee shop staging area was located in the heart of Providence’s College Hill, a charming neighborhood nestled between Brown and RISD.. By no coincidence whatsoever, this coffee shop was less than 200 feet from one of those shiny new 5G antenna nodes.. So no sooner had we slipped our sims into those new nodes than we were off: sidewalk speed, testing and getting the predictably outrageous download speeds.. You can see my buddy Nirav from TechnoBuffalo getting nearly 20 times the download speed on 5G than the 4G Galaxy Note. 10 right next to it., Which was impressive enough that we totally didn’t realize there was a cute dog right, there.
Hi doge! Now I wouldn’t have expected anything less from a brand new 5G network with no customer load, but I also wouldn’t have agreed to cover this launch if it was just gon na be Chicago all over again.. One of the complaints. You may recall, from my time in the Windy City is that Chicago’s 5G network still uses 4G for uploads. And that’s a bummer for those of us who need to push hi-res video to YouTube or host high-quality live-streams..
So you’ll be happy to know that Providence is using 5G in both directions., It’s not symmetrical, but it is about twice as fast as a 4G up-link on average., So kudos to Verizon on a big win there.. Another thing I couldn’t do in Chicago was maintain a stable 5G connection indoors and in Providence I barely managed to make it happen just inside the window of our coffee shop.. The trouble is, the connection was only usable long enough for one speed test., It dropped back down to 4G.
As soon as I walked away from the window., It was nice while it lasted. In another test across the street. I had a strong 5G connection while standing on the sidewalk, but when I took a seat on a staircase with my back to the network node, I lost it., Nope 4G LTE., Almost immediately.
The city may be smaller folks, but the basic physics remain: the same., The Millimeter waves that Verizon’s using for 5G are hyper-sensitive to any obstacles that come between you and the antenna.. In our four hour trek across Providence, we visited a half-dozen 5G nodes and sometimes staying connected was literally a matter of which direction. I was pointing because your body blocks the waves. Or even how many leaves were on the trees above my head, Two bars and not enough service to even complete a speed test.
When the site is within spitting distance on the top of that pole.. Honestly, it’s quite familiar because yeah the network is built a little more densely here. You have coverage in more places and the speeds are a little faster on the whole, but you can be cruising along at max speed, one second and the next glitch-town USA. Back down to 4G.. I tried an Instagram live on 5G and it was a disaster.
Viewers complained of audio sync issues and poor video quality.. Now network upgrades like implementing beam, forming and just generally expanding. The footprint will help with all of this, but it’s gon na take time.
When the connection does hold it’s tremendous.. I downloaded five and a half hours of music on Spotify’s maximum quality setting in one minute.. I downloaded this 125 megabyte game that I’ve never heard of. In two seconds. It took more than four times that long for the phone to actually install it. And battery life seemed to hold out a bit better.
On the Note 10 5G than on the Galaxy S10 5G, I used in Chicago. After four hours of aggressive usage. I had about half a charge left., But taking it back to something else, I couldn’t use in Chicago one of 5G’s, true killer. Apps is Mobile Hotspot, or at least it’s going to be.
See in Providence. I could connect my Macbook to a 5G connected Note 10, but I couldn’t get speeds anywhere close to where they should’ve been.. I asked Sascha Segan from PCMag about this since he’s also spent time testing this network, and his take is that this is likely a network misconfiguration problem.. He goes more in depth in a recent piece at PCMag and I’ll link.
It below.. In sum, though, it’s what I’ve been saying this whole video and the video before it., It’s just too early. Too early for these nascent 5G networks to be relied upon., And unless you live right next to a node and don’t mind opening your window to use it Too early for you to pony up a premium for phones that support it.. This video is sponsored by dBrand.
Whether your Galaxy Note is 5G or not. It’S a fingerprint magnet so protect it with the best vinyl skins in the business.. Get your dbrand at the link. In the description, below.
And finally, a word on editing this sucker for you, video fans out there. This was shot voiceovered and edited entirely on the Galaxy Note, 10, Plus in Adobe Rush., And not as part of a sponsored campaign or anything. I just wanted to see. If I could. You’ve, probably noticed it’s less elaborate than my usual affair. Samsung’s decision to ditch the headphone jack and not include a dongle in the box meant I couldn’t use a lav mic..
So that explains the audio difference. You probably hear, and I had to switch to wired earbuds while editing, because there was just too much lag on Bluetooth. But those complaints aside after three years of needing a computer to build every video, it was so liberating to do everything on a phone.. Let me know if you’d watch more videos like this or if the quality sacrifice is just too big an adjustment., And if you wan na, hear more about editing on mobile or wan na suggest the next 5G city. I should try out hit me up on Twitter @ theMrMobile. Until next time., Thanks for watching And stay mobile.
My friends. ( soft techno music ) .