How 5G Can Benefit You Right Now?

5G is a term we’re starting to hear about right now, and while there is a ton of cool things it will enable in the future that everyone is talking about, you might be wondering what you can do with 5G right now.

Well, I’ve spent the last couple of days testing out Sprint’s 5G network that went live recently in Chicago and, frankly, I was a little skeptical as to what you can do with it now, not 3 years from now, right now. But, honestly, it was way more useful already than I thought it would be.

This video was sponsored by Qualcomm but all opinions are my own and I hope you enjoyed it anyway 🙂

First up, the thing that is the most apparent is just faster speeds. Just like 4G (LTE) gave us a big boost from 3G, 5G is already starting to do the same.

I tested it against LTE phones that are already fast in their own right and was surprised by the difference.

Downloading an episode of Stranger Things took so much less time.

Downloading my Spotify playlist on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 and X50 modem-powered Samsung S10 5G I was lent to test out the network: same result.

I even did a video call with my father while walking around an area with a lot of people and normally it would work but be a bit choppy, maybe freeze here and there, etc. On the 5G device though, it was crisp and without any hiccups.

It’s honestly funny to think just how much you don’t think you need this type of speed until you have it and realize just how much faster it can make things that normally we’re used to waiting for (even without pretty fast LTE speeds we’re used to).

Another thing I noticed that was great, was that in crowded touristy areas, for example, when my other carrier SIMs would both slow to a crawl on LTE, the 5G phone was still giving me crazy speeds. Now, some of this comes down to the fact that there isn’t a lot of people on the 5G network, sure. But also the bandwidth they have available for it is so much larger it can handle a lot more than the current LTE networks.

Now, when more people do get on the 5G networks, it’ll relieve some congestion on the LTE ones making those faster too and since LTE and 5G will be working together in a lot of cases those two types of networks are able to handle a lot more users than they could alone.

And it’s not just about phones.

Sprint also let me use a Qualcomm-powered HTC Hub that is basically a portable Wifi hotspot that can use the 5G network here and I tried that out while just sitting outside of a cafe whose wifi speeds were annoying me and was getting over 150Mbps easily. That’s way faster than the average home internet speeds in the US. Real-world, not theoretical speeds.

I was able to surf the web with pages loading instantly, streamed Spotify, had YouTube running in the background, I was able to use the 5G network as if I was sitting at home and it just worked seamlessly.

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Now, what I’m testing out is just the beginning of the 5G rollout, of course, but these carriers aren’t playing around–they’re rolling out these networks faster than any other network before. New cities are popping up every day, the speeds are getting faster on a weekly basis, and the latency is getting lower and lower.

Now, I know how crazy it is going to be when these networks all reach their real potentials and I’ve been excited for that for a while now, but, after this trip, I have to admit, I’m excited for even about the next few months.

Let me know what you guys think in the comments below and check out the link here for more info on the 5G devices coming. Also, I’ll be doing a video explaining more on 5G soon so make sure to subscribe to my weekly email newsletter if you want to be notified about more videos I do like that one.

As always though, thanks for watching!