The first 5G phone: our contact with the future of smartphones

We literally tinkered with the world's first 5G phone when we slapped the recently launched 5G Moto Mod on the back of an existing 4G phone.

And it is indeed faster, according to our 5G field tests using the Moto Z3, last year's 4G LTE phone, which can be upgraded to 5G to support the new 5G additive. Yes, the 5G service is here, and it meets in pieces.

We could buy the 5G Mod in exactly one Chicago store on launch day, and it came out faster than expected. Verizon and Motorola surpassed their initial launch on April 11 to become the leading manufacturer and supplier of 5G phones, surpassing Samsung's planned launch on April 5 in Korea. Smart.

While this makes Verizon and Motorola the world's first 5Gs, the question is, what does this really mean for all of us, people using the first 5G phone on the first 5G network, available only in US cities.

What was needed to get 5G service

The launch of the 5G network by Verizon is far from wide. Officially, the launch takes place only in Chicago (Illinois) and Minneapolis (Wisconsin). Although Chicago is an important city and Minneapolis is not small, the actual availability of 5G in each city is still limited.

The 5G network covers only several Chicago neighborhoods and Verizon has not released any coverage maps available to customers. These were dense areas of Chicago, including Magnificent Mile (specifically the Verizon Store), Gold Coast, Old Town, River North and parts of South Loop and West Loop. Milwaukee 5G coverage is located in the west central, east central, Elliot Park and Verizon Store of the Mall of America.

In addition to the hands-on activities in the Magnificent Mile Verizon Store where the launch event took place, we knew that it would be difficult to experience the 5G in the wild.

We needed both the Moto Z3, the 5G Moto Mod, an unlimited Verizon data plan, and a special $ 10 5G service charge in addition to the data plan to access the 5G network. In the end, the equipment cost us $ 749 at the store (without opting for a contract with discounts), and the service will cost about $ 100 a month.

5G vs. 4G LTE Speeds

In the Verizon Store where the launch event took place, a 5G node was set up front. And, with a short distance between the Moto Z3 and the node, with a line of sight, the aircraft managed to reach 651 Mbps downstream. This compares to a later test on the 4G network that reached 213 Mbps downstream. Meanwhile, upstream data actually uses only 4G, so there is no speed increase.

How does this speed translate into actual performance?

While browsing 1080p videos on YouTube, they all started playing fast. While browsing the lines of time, we would see a momentary pause then the reading would resume. However, when switching to 4G, the results were not significantly different.

Since most of us do not use our mobile network solely for speed testing, we jumped directly to the Play Store to download the 1.81 GB PUBG Mobile game. On the 5G network , the download took a little less than 4 minutes and 30 seconds. Repeating the download on the 4G network, the download took 6 minutes and 8 seconds.

Thus, while the 5G network clearly shows that it is in the lead, it may not be an order of magnitude faster.

5G reliability

Chicago Benefits: Transit, Lake Access, 5G … pic.twitter.com/Z7xMNHxgc3April 3, 2019

Our practice has questioned the reliability of the network. The Verizon Store where the event took place was probably no bigger than 30 feet wide and 100 feet back, with a 5G knot at the front of the building.

Reception was uneven at the back and could even stop near the front. We have seen several times that the Moto Z3 went from 5G to 4G LTE, and we had to make sure that our speed tests were all 5G.

Although we are testing 5G connectivity over the next week, the ability of millimeter-wave technology to penetrate obstacles is a concern. The absence of a defined 5G map is also a problem because whenever we do not get the 5G, we wonder if that is because it does not happen. There is no signal in the zone or the phone simply does not detect it.

We will continue to test the advent of 5G in Chicago this week, so stay tuned for updates on how the service works for us and on the maximum speeds we're reaching. When it works, it is faster than 4G LTE, which means that the future of smartphones is there, but not quite everywhere.