Today Verizon officially released the Galaxy S10 5G, with Samsung's device being the first smartphone with built-in 5G connectivity to launch on Verizon. (The 5G Moto Mod for the Moto Z3 launched last month.) Some folks took the Galaxy S10 5G for a test drive on Verizon's 5G network in Chicago, and the results were impressive.
Speed tests taken today showed the Galaxy S10 5G breaking 1Gbps download speeds on Verizon's 5G network. As you can see below, Verizon's George Koroneos managed to achieve a download speed of 1098Mbps, while The Verge's Chris Welch achieved a download speed of 1096Mbps in a test.
Those download speeds are pretty impressive, downloading an episode of The Office in eight seconds or the entirety of Iron Man 2 in 90 seconds.
Not all of the tests broke the 1Gbps barrier, of course, but even those that didn't still posted up impressive speeds. One test resulted in a download speed of 798Mbps, and another was 587Mbps.
And we've crossed 1Gbps. In the real world. This is a little mind blowing to see. pic.twitter.com/ODtyNsR8m4
— Chris Welch (@chriswelch) May 16, 2019
There are some things to be aware of about these tests. First is that Verizon's mobile 5G network is only live in two cities as of this post — Chicago and Minneapolis — and it's only available in parts of those two cities. Verizon has said that it plans to roll 5G coverage out in more than 30 cities in 2019, but it's unclear when we'll see other cities go live. Also of note is that uploads are still being done on 4G LTE, which is why the upload speeds we're seeing in tests are so much lower than the download speeds. Finally, these 5G networks are still pretty new, which means there aren't a ton of other folks on them right now.
Despite all that, it's still pretty crazy to see a smartphone breaking 1Gbps speeds, and if you live in Chicago or Minneapolis, you can grab a Galaxy S10 5G from Verizon and get out there and find the 1Gbps speeds for yourself.
