[Samsung Galaxy S20 / S20+ / S20 Ultra Questions & ] Pascal536:
The beautiful new 5G world showed its first cracks months ago, when early testers in the US realized that the really much faster data radio with the promised gigabit speeds could only be used on some street corners of major US cities and only if no leaf obscures the direct view of the mobile phone mast. These 5G networks in the so-called mmWave range above 24 Ghz are fast, but hardly penetrate any obstacle. What the majority of the world's population, including in this country, receives instead are 5G networks in the sub-6 Ghz range, which currently deliver about 100 to 400 Mbps in the download, depending on the country/provider/indoor or outdoor position, so sometimes not as much more than with 4G, but with lower latency than with LTE.

5G: Sub-6 or mmWave

However, these have the great advantage of spreading far and thus covering entire areas of the country, which allows T-Mobile to advertise in the USA with almost universal 5G supply. With the exception of Italy, only these Sub-6 networks are currently active in Europe, but the Italian mobile operator TIM has been operating in the n258 band at 26 Ghz since January of that year. If we are already on these fast mmWave networks: In addition to the USA, where AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon supply some regions with mmWave networks, Japan, Korea and China are also following suit here, at least according to available information from Qualcomm, on Wikipedia as well as the Japanese provider NTT Docomo (PDF).

Questions you could ask yourself

Which brings us slowly to the problem, because current 5G smartphones such as the Galaxy S20 series from Samsung and here explicitly the Galaxy S20 Ultra, which we want to illuminate here on behalf of everyone else, are despite the marketing as 5G-capable smartphones can not be used in all networks on a flat-rate basis. If you are interested in 5G and pay flagship prices for this, you should also ask yourself the following questions:

Which 5G networks can I use in which countries?

How future-proof are the 5G phones purchased today?

Which 5G networks can I use in which countries?

As you can see from Qualcomm's world map above, there is also a wild growth of a wide variety of frequency ranges in terms of 5G, as with LTE. So if a smartphone does not support all these frequencies, which are marked with the small letter "n" at 5G for better distinction, as is now the case with LTE modems in high-end smartphones, you cannot use your expensive 5G smartphone from Europe. in the 5G networks of the USA or China, for example. Even a 5G smartphone from the USA will not be able to dial into the fast mobile networks from Europe, unless it supports all the different 5G bands worldwide.

A 5G World modem is not yet available in 2020, neither the Qualcomm X55system nor Samsung's Exynos 5123 covers all frequency ranges used worldwide, so Samsung will also deliver five different Galaxy S20 Ultra models depending on the region, all of which support only the continent's 5G networks currently on offer, and not even the continent's. As the table below shows, which we had to gather from a wide variety of sources, because Samsung unfortunately operates completely non-transparently here and provides concrete information on its websites only in South Korea, the Canadian model does not support the mmWave networks of the USA, which spark in the bands n260 and n261.

Interesting detail on the sidelines: If you buy a Galaxy S20 Ultra in the USA, you can not only not use a single 5G network in Europe or Asia, also LTE-Band 20 is missing from the list below, which comes from the US FCC below, i.e. here you could even use so problems that have long been believed to have been overcome by some LTE networks.

How future-proof are the 5G phones purchased today?

If one and one are taken together, the future security of currently sold 5G smartphones inevitably gives a bleak picture. Example Europe: We already know through a Samsung statement or the teardown by JerryRigEverythingthat there are no mmWave antennas in European and South Korean Galaxy S20 Ultra models, and the supported frequency ranges above suggest that new mmWave networks in Europe and Asia will not be able to be used by the Galaxy S20 generation of 2020 (as well as other 5G phones of 2020).

So in the case of the Galaxy S20 Ultra, which costs more than 1,300 euros, one should ask whether the money is actually well invested for this, or whether it would not be better to forgo 5G this year, at least in this price range - with the announced 5G midrangers based on the Snapdragon 765, the valuation may be different. Incidentally, we find the fact that even the South Korean Galaxy S20 Ultra does not support the networks available in the mmWave-n257 band, at least already available in test mode, but only the sub-6 band n78.

This information even comes directly from the South Korean Samsung website itself, which by the way has published all the detailed specs to the Galaxy S20 Ultra. The European Galaxy S20 Ultra will also not be able to use the future mmWave networks in the N257 and n258 bands, meaning the Galaxy S20 Ultra could be part of the old iron as early as 2021 or 2022.

The industry is simply not yet ready

For once, however, we have to protect Samsung. As in the early days of the first 4G networks, modems or antenna modules that support all bands available worldwide are not yet available. Other smartphone manufacturers that will offer 5G phones in 2020, including almost certainly Apple's first 5G iPhones in the fall, will probably be on the market in many different model variants depending on the region due to the lack of corresponding world modems, thus only supporting the 5G networks currently active there - mmWave probably only in the more expensive Pro models and probably only in the USA. The new 5G chipsets, which - at least in the case of the already announced Qualcomm X60 - suggest wider frequency support in 2021 are expected to provide a remedy. Whether this 3rd generation of 5G modems will be the optimum for world travelers, however, remains to be seen.

Samsung's non-transparent marketing

In conclusion, we would like to criticize Samsung for its current marketing strategy. All the above restrictions would not be a major problem for consumers if manufacturers were to transparently inform about the current possibilities of 5G as well as the limitations of the individual smartphones. Unfortunately, Samsung is taking a completely different approach here, dazzling its consumers with the beautiful new 5G world without even mentioning the problems mentioned above. Not only, as mentioned above, virtually no detailed specifications for the individual international Galaxy S20 models are provided, the first press releases issued were even decidedly wrong, as a comparison between global and German publications. In the meantime, the German press release has been removed.

Falsche Angaben in der deutschen Galaxy S20-Pressemitteilung vom 11.02.2020, mittlerweile von Samsung gelöscht.

Incorrect information in the German Galaxy S20 press release of 11.02.2020, now deleted by Samsung.

Missing data sheets at Samsung

We had to take the information on the supported 5G bands partly from data sheets of Deutsche Telekom, from online shops or from a report of the PCMag, which in turn search for the information in the certification documents of the FCC as well as in firmware dumps Had. Such non-transparent behaviour should be denounced, which we are doing once again. We have contacted Samsung about this matter, but we have not received any further response from an initial statement in connection with JerryRigEverything's teardown.

We hope that other manufacturers will transparently list the supported 5G bands in publicly available data sheets in the future, so that interested parties can easily understand whether or not, for example, the 5G flagship sold in Europe can now also use the Sub-6 or mmWave networks in the USA. We also find the lack of mmWave antennas in European and South Korean Galaxy S20 Ultra models disgraceful when Samsung South Korea releasesa Youtube video in parallel with the mmWave antennas explicitly highlighting without pointing out that this only affects the US models.

Galaxy S20 Ultra without 5G modem?

By the way: In India and other countries without 5G infrastructure, Samsung also sells a Galaxy S20 Ultra without a 5G modem as the Galaxy S20 Ultra LTE, as the picture below shows. However, the model with Exynos 990-SoC, which is otherwise similar to the international model SM-988B, is practically not available in the EU, moreover Samsung still relies on its long-maintained consumer-unfriendly tradition, the first commissioning only with a SIM in the region, which makes it more difficult to import from other countries. This workaround, if it makes economic sense, which we do not want to judge here, remains closed - Galaxy S20 Ultra-interested people in this country are therefore doomed to pay for a 5G modem, even if it is only limited for the above reasons in 2020 is useful, at least if you want to dial into 5G networks outside the respective parent region.

Source(s)

Own Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra Telekom Data Sheet (PDF), PC Mag, 5G Wikipedia, 5G Networks Wikipedia, Various Samsung Websites, such as Samsung South Korea, Techinsights, NTDoComo (PDF), Qualcomm, German Samsung Newsroom, Global Samsung Newsroom, TechnoProz Youtube Channel

From : https://www.notebookcheck.com/Verges....457666.0.html