SEATTLE — Holiday shoppers thinking about purchasing a 5G phone this year may be interested in reading Ookla’s most recent Speedtest Intelligence data analysis, which finds not all 5G Android devices offer a massive improvement in Canada.
For its report, Ookla analyzed Speedtest Intelligence data from the most popular Android and iPhone devices during Q3 2021 to help consumers determine if the expected speed performance of 5G is worth the extra cost of an upgraded phone.
As shown in the chart above for Canada, Ookla’s analysis found “while the fastest 5G-capable device among the top five most popular (the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G) offered very fast median download speeds, two 4G devices (the Note10+ and the S10+) were nearly as fast as the slowest 5G-capable device on this list (the S20 Fan Edition 5G),” reads the report.
The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G’s median download speed was 121.53 Mbps in Q3 2021, compared to 69.63 Mbps for the Samsung Galaxy S20 Fan Edition 5G, and 67.61 Mbps and 64.99 Mbps for the Samsung Galaxy Note10+ and S10+, respectively.
“To upgrade or not is definitely a question here of which device you are upgrading from and which you plan to upgrade to,” the report says.
In its analysis of Apple iPhone devices in Canada, Ookla found the 5G-capable iPhone 13’s median download speed (163.34 Mbps) in Q3 2021 was more than three times as fast as that on the 4G iPhone 11 (48.71 Mbps), as shown in the chart below.
For Ookla’s full report, which includes analysis for 11 other countries, please click here.
Charts borrowed from Ookla’s report.
