TESTING METHODOLOGY
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years because of two big changes: 5G and the COVID-19
crisis.
Traditionally, we’d tour each city and then test rural
areas between cities before moving on to the next one.
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which we felt safe using this year. So we hired roughly
two dozen drivers to each test within their own cities, in
their own cars, sleeping in their own beds, then
shipping the testing kits from place to place. The result
is a nationwide COVID-safe test, but without the rural
data we usually provide.
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our test cities, T-Mobile has it in all 26, and Verizon has
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each other.
Initially, we expected the 5G phones to always show
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the case. So for each test stop, we ended up choosing the
best result from each of the two devices on the same
network, no matter what G they were on.
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Samsung Galaxy S20 series phones for 5G. The S10s
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modems we’ve tested. The S20s were chosen because at
the time of testing, they were the only phones that could
handle the entire “layer cake” of 5G bands—low, middle,
and high.
We hired
roughly two
dozen drivers
to each test
within their
own cities, in
their own cars,
sleeping in
their own beds.