(bright music)
- Nope, this is not a
video about urban camping.
It's about 5G testing, and yes,
why the best 5G experience
you can get right now
is on the streets of
the biggest U.S. cities,
in a camping tent, with
a fan, and a cooler.
I'm dead serious about the cooler.
It's all gonna make sense soon, I promise.
But first, some 5G basic.
5G is the network that
comes after 4G, or LTE,
and it's gonna be so fast, it's
gonna knock your socks off.
People are crazy hyped about 5G
and all of the innovation
it's supposed to bring.
All four of the U.S. carriers,
Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile,
have just started rolling
out 5G in pockets of the U.S.
To get real 5G, you need a new phone.
The $1,300 Samsung Galaxy
S10 5G is one of the first,
and it's available on all the carriers.
So, over the last few
weeks, I packed up my gear
and embarked on a 5G testing tour.
I hit up four U.S. cities to test all four
of the U.S. carriers' 5G networks
with Samsung's new phones.
That's what I'm doing here in Chicago:
testing Sprint and Verizon's network.
Turns out 5G is freaking
fast, when you're outdoors,
and you're standing in the right spot,
and it's not too hot out,
and the stars are aligned just right.
Right here in Chicago, I'm
getting crazy fast speeds
on Verizon's 5G network,
and got even higher speeds
in Denver last week.
On speed tests, I've been getting
around 900 megabits per second.
That's about 25 times as fast
as the average LTE download,
an that's at least nine times
faster than my home wifi.
In Denver, I got even faster speeds.
In some spots, I hit
1,800 megabits per second.
It was nuts.
I've been able to download
a 10 gigabyte file
in two minutes and 40 seconds,
the whole latest season
of Stranger Things,
or 2.1 gigabytes: 34 seconds.
On LTE, that can take an hour.
A 2.5 gigabyte game on 5G?
50 seconds!
Right now in the U.S.,
no matter where you are
or what network you're
on, only downloads use 5G,
so if you upload a video or a file,
you'll get 4G speeds.
Once the networks evolve, those
uploads will get faster too.
Here in New York City,
on T-Mobile's network,
I've been getting closer to
300 to 400 megabits per second,
not as fast in Verizon
in Chicago and Denver
or AT&T, which I tested in Atlanta,
but still fast enough to
download that 10 gigabyte file
in just under five minutes.
In my tests, AT&T and Verizon
tied for the fastest speeds.
I wish I could tell you
those speeds are everywhere,
and the coverage is wonderful,
and the world has changed forever.
But no.
Here in Chicago, it's crazy fast,
because there's a Verizon 5G
node, or cell, right there.
See that?
That's what broadcasting the signal.
But when I move my tent up the
block, say 400 to 600 feet,
I get no 5G signal, only 4G.
Same thing happens with T-Mobile's network
in Manhattan's Lower East Side.
And when I go indoors,
I drop right back to 4G.
This is because of the types of 5G
being implemented right now.
The type currently being used by Verizon,
AT&T and T-Mobile is
called millimeter wave.
It's very fast but only
covers shorter distances
and doesn't penetrate walls,
concrete, or other obstacles.
The other type is called mid-band 5G,
and it's being used by Sprint,
which just launched its 5G
service here in Chicago.
It's not as fast, but it
has much wider coverage
and better signal penetration.
In this spot, I'm getting
around 300 megabits per second
on Sprint's network.
I can take my tent anywhere
in the city and get coverage.
I can even go inside my hotel lobby.
And while the speeds are not blistering,
it's still pretty decent.
I downloaded the latest
season of Stranger Things
in three minutes and 20 seconds.
Yeah, it seems pretty crazy that right now
you have to be outdoors
or in a camping tent
to get 5G signal on at
least three of the networks.
As the carriers or the
networks add more spectrum,
it should improve.
This brings me to the
biggest problem of them all:
the heat.
Throughout my testing, the Verizon, AT&T,
and T-Mobile Galaxy 5G
phones would get very warm,
due to the hot summer sun
and sometimes one or two download tests,
and the phone would just turn
off 5G and go back to 4G.
Yep, bye-bye signal.
This didn't happen with
the Sprint version.
At times, I registered the phone
getting over 100 degrees
with this laser thermometer.
The tent provided much-needed shade,
and a fan or air conditioning
actually seems to cool down the back.
But a few minutes in the
cooler helps the most.
In fact, engineers testing these phones
have told me they use ice as well.
Another solution?
Just use 5G at night.
A Samsung spokeswoman says this
thermal management is done,
"by design to minimize energy usage
"and optimize battery performance."
"As 5G technology and
the ecosystem evolve,
"it's only going to
get better," she added.
We're clearly at the starting line
of this so-called 5G race.
It's very early days, and
very not ready for you.
But even just the first
taste of the speeds
make me excited about what's to come:
blazing fast connections,
even when you're not
roughing it in the wild.
Should have gotten the two-person.
