T-Mobile’s first 5G phones are a stepping stone to the real thing

For months, T-Mobile has been saying it’s got a smarter, sounder 5G strategy than both Verizon and AT&T. To understand what an optimal 5G network looks like, you should think of a fancy cake with three distinct layers, the company’s executives have claimed.

At the top is ultra-fast millimeter wave technology, on which Verizon is so far basing its entire 5G experience. Data speeds on millimeter wave are extremely fast (regularly over 1Gbps), but the signal doesn’t carry very far — maybe a city block or two — and indoor coverage is a huge problem. In the middle, you’ve got mid-band spectrum — like the 2.5Ghz airwaves that Sprint is currently using for 5G. It doesn’t get the same eye-popping speeds that millimeter wave can offer, but coverage is much more dependable and resembles that of LTE.

And at the base of everything is low-band spectrum, and that’s the part of the equation that T-Mobile lit up recently. Thanks to its vast 600MHz holdings, T-Mobile is already covering large stretches of major cities and suburbs without the signal gaps you’d encounter on Verizon 5G.

The trade-off? Speeds are noticeably slower and not what some would consider a next-generation leap over LTE. T-Mobile isn’t hiding that fact either, claiming that customers who buy either the OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren Edition or Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G can expect download speeds 20 percent faster (on average) than typical LTE performance.

In my experience testing the OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren Edition in New York City, download rates vary between 70Mbps and 200Mbps on T-Mobile’s 600MHz 5G network. Anything over 200 is on the rarer side, as I most commonly landed a little over 100Mbps. These aren’t the kind of speed tests that’ll leave your eyes wide open in disbelief to the same degree as millimeter wave. If you’ve got a relatively new flagship smartphone, there’s a good chance it can already hit some of those numbers today on LTE. Sometimes.

More often than not, we don’t get amazing data speeds in real-world use; the benefit of low-band 5G is that you’ll see faster, more dependable coverage at the same places that previously suffered poor coverage. In one Brooklyn coffee shop, the OnePlus hit around 40Mbps, which obviously isn’t impressive on its own. But my Verizon iPhone 11 Pro Max could barely cross 7Mbps in the same spot. Elsewhere, I often saw over 120Mbps. Again, taken alone, that’s ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But knowing you’ll get top-tier data speeds almost everywhere you go is a nice perk. It just doesn’t necessarily feel very next generation.

Even with its huge coverage footprint, T-Mobile acknowledges that 5G is still for early adopters. Heck, OnePlus even writes “5G is still developing” on the orange box of the 5G McLaren Edition. These companies are trying to hype 5G and temper expectations for these early days at the same time. I don’t envy that tightrope walk. My speeds with the OnePlus haven’t been radical and I’m not using my phone any differently than if I wasn’t on 5G. PCMag’s Sascha Segan describes T-Mobile’s 600MHz 5G as “4.9G,” and that seems right on the money. As with other carriers, uploads remain limited to LTE right now — and T-Mobile won’t let you tether using 5G data.

(theverge.com)