If you're feeling pretty chuffed with your fibre broadband speeds at home, you might want to avoid watching this impressive footage. The video shows the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G hitting download speeds of more than 1Gbps in the United States, where it launched earlier this month on mobile network Verizon.
That's seriously impressive. Those download speeds allowed Digital Trends journalist Julian Chokkattu to download PUBG: Mobile – which totals around 1.8GB of Android – in less than half a minute. On the Galaxy S10 Plus, that same file takes a comparatively eternal two minutes to download to the device.
If this early test of 5G speeds on the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G are accurate, that means customers can expect to see speeds increase four-fold when moving to the next-generation mobile network technology and the latest-generation S10 handset.
According to the latest analysis by Ofcom, the average home broadband speed in the UK is 46.2Mbps. The fastest fibre on the market now comes courtesy of Virgin Media's VIVID 500 plan, which boasts download speeds of 516 Mbps. But even that remains a long way from the 1Gbps seen on 5G networks in the US.
Watch the staggering speed test video, shared on Twitter, below:
This is 5G on the brand new Samsung Galaxy S10 5G in front of my hotel. It's crazy the difference a month makes. #FirstToRealTime pic.twitter.com/Syxc7HGrqnMay 16, 2019
Before you get too excited, there are a couple of caveats. First off, this is the very start of 5G network technology. As such, this stunning performance is still restricted to a number of very small geographical areas compared to the roll-out of 3G and 4G.
It's also worth noting that almost nobody is using the 5G network at the moment, so we wouldn't expect to see any serious deterioration in the speeds caused by thousands trying to tweet, or post to Instagram simultaneously.
The 5G networks rolling-out across the United States is different to those coming soon in the UK. As such, we're unlikely to see the speeds achieved by millimetre wave in the UK anytime soon.
EE will be the first network to flip the switch on its 5G offering, with pre-orders available online and in-store now, and the next-generation network scheduled to go live on Thursday May 30, 2019. Vodafone will follow on July 3, 2019.
EE expects customers to experience an increase in speeds of around 100-150Mbps even in the busiest areas. According to the network, some of its customers will break the one gigabit-per-second milestone on their 5G smartphones, depending on their handset model and their location. For comparison, the fastest speed possible when EE launched 4G in 2012 was 50Mbps.
EE 5G will start in four capital cities in the UK: London, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast – plus Birmingham and Manchester. The BT-owned carrier will then roll-out 5G connectivity to some of the busiest areas in ten more UK cities later in the year – Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds, Hull, Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry and Bristol. In total, EE plans to hit 1,500 5G-enabled sites across the UK by the end of 2019.
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Meanwhile, Vodafone will enable its rival 5G network in Glasgow, London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Cardiff and Bristol on July 3, with an expansion into 12 more towns and cities by the end of the year planned.
For those who want to take a run at bettering this speed test themselves, the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G is available to pre-order from both EE and Vodafone. The latter is offering the Galaxy S10 5G on June 7, 2019 with a promotional pre-order pricing from £58 a month for 5GB of mobile data. There's also a £149 upfront cost.
Pre-order pricing for the Galaxy S10 5G on EE starts from £69 a month, with a £130 one-off upfront cost. That includes 10GB of 5G mobile data, as well as unlimited text messages and minutes. It also bundles two perks that can be tweaked each moth, these so-called "Swappable Benefits" include free access to BT Sport, or the ability to stream Apple Music, Tidal, Prime Video, Netflix and MTV on 5G without eating into your monthly data allowance.
