SEOUL – 5G was rolled out to mobile users in South Korea in April this year. Since then, the number of subscribers has crossed the three million mark.
The fifth generation of cellular network technology promises download speeds of up to 20Gbps, 20 times faster than what LTE, or 4G, offers currently.
This enhanced speed will be a game-changer for content streaming and consumption on mobile devices. A movie with a file size of 4GB, for example, can theoretically be downloaded in a mere 1.5 seconds at peak 5G speeds, compared to around 30 seconds with 4G.
But how does reality match up to expectations at the moment?
During a visit to the Digital City, Samsung’s headquarters in Suwon, South Korea, on Sept 24, I got my hands on a Samsung Galaxy S10 5G – the world’s first 5G-compatible smartphone – to get a sense of the speeds offered by the technology.
I tried downloading an episode of a television series and a movie from Netflix, followed by a speed test.
My initial plan was to conduct the test in a hotel in Seoul, but mobile connection was unstable and constantly alternated between 5G and LTE.
This was also observed in other indoor settings, where signal strength for 5G was weaker as compared to when the device was used in open areas.
I then headed outdoors and proceeded with the test after successfully establishing a strong 5G connection on the Galaxy S10 5G.
An episode of comedy series Brooklyn 99 was the first test subject. The show had a run-time of 22 minutes and a file size of 134MB.
I was half-expecting the episode to be saved onto the phone in a couple of seconds, based on the hypothetical speeds of 5G. However, the download from Netflix took about 10 seconds, which was perhaps a little long in 5G terms, but still acceptable to me as a consumer.
A full-length feature film was next. War movie Black Hawk Down was chosen as it had a long run-time of 2 hours 24 minutes. Its file size was 1.4GB.
After hitting the download button, it took around one minute for the film to be saved. My assessment for this would be the same as that of the Brooklyn 99 episode.
The trial ended off with a speed test.
On 5G, a download speed of 551Mbps was recorded. That was more than twice as fast as 4G, which had a reading of 214Mbps when the speed test was repeated.
Similar results were observed with upload speeds, with 5G registering 58.7Mbps and 4G 29.9Mbps.
The media trip to Digital City was organised by Samsung.
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