We tested a 5G handset in Wuzhen and the speed lived up to the hype – now it’s a wait for wider coverage
- China is expected to be a front-runner in the roll-out of commercial 5G services with an estimated 600 million 5G subscribers by 2025
A bright new 5G era is dawning – so says a vast array of experts, telecoms carriers and handset developers. But is reality living up to the early hype?
Chinese smartphone makers Huawei, Xiaomi and Vivo have all rolled out 5G phones in recent months and 5G pre-registrations are close to 10 million in China as the country aims to be a leader in the new network technology.
Before heading to Wuzhen, one of the most famous ancient towns in southeastern China, for the sixth World Internet Conference last week, we learned that the town would be fully covered with a 5G network. We thought this would be an opportune moment to test out the technology and so we asked Xiaomi if they could ship us a 5G phone for a test.
We borrowed a sim card from China Unicom’s booth at the exhibition centre in Wuzhen, and with our Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 5G handset, using the Speedtest app, we were ready for the test.
By happenstance Lei Jun, the founder and chief executive of Xiaomi, also decided to test the 5G network in Wuzhen. Using a Xiaomi 9 pro 5G, the company’s first 5G handset on sale in mainland China and supported by three carriers, Lei did three tests with an average download speed of 431 megabits per second (Mbps) – or about 10 times faster than the average speed test on our 4G phones in Hong Kong.
“I deliberately tested the 5G coverage [in Wuzhen], what it is like,” Lei said on his public WeChat account last week. “Using 5G is indeed much faster.”