We've got our hands on the UK's first 5G phone, the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G, and will be updating this article over the next 24 hours with details on how EE's 5G network, and the phone, performs.
11am: say hello to 5G
We picked up our OnePlus 7 Pro 5G near the BT and EE offices in St Paul's, London – an area of the city particularly well covered by EE's new 5G network.
It's one of the most congested areas for mobile network traffic in London, and EE has focused on these high-usage areas for the first phase of its 5G rollout.
It's one of six 5G sites EE turned on ahead of its May 30 launch, so it could test its network. The other locations are Covent Garden, Kensington Gardens, Soho, The Strand and Chancery Lane.
However the coverage, we're told, extends north to about Highbury & Islington, east to Mile End, as far south as about Southwark and west to Ealing. That means most of central London is covered – however there are still 5G blackspots within that.
The first thing we do when we get the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G in our hand is run a speed test on the Fast app, which gives us a speed of 220Mbps.
That's some way off the 1Gbps+ speeds 5G should be able to deliver consistently in the future, but it's comfortably more than the 15-20Mbps we were able to manage on our 4G device.
12pm: and then there was 4G
As we've mentioned, there isn't blanket 5G coverage across London, and as we stepped off the tube at Lancaster Gate (near Hyde Park), a check of the phone revealed we only had 4G connectivity.
This area along with Paddington, we're told, isn't currently covered by EE's 5G network, and a speed test of our 4G connection returned a result of 35Mbps. That's still pretty quick for 4G, but it's some way off the speeds we were enjoying just a few miles east.
While the speeds in 5G areas are impressive, this highlights the fact that for many this patchy coverage could cause frustration. For most, you're probably best holding off a 5G upgrade for the moment.
EE says it is upgrading around 100 sites every month to 5G and by this time next year (May/June) it plans to have 5G in 50 cites and towns around the UK. Again, coverage in these locations may not be a blanket – it depends on the size of the city and the compliance of councils and landowners for upgrading/building masts.
1pm: the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G
There’s little visual difference between the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G and the standard 7 Pro. Image Credit: TechRadar
Back in the office and we're taking a closer look at the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G. Apart from its 5G connectivity and a small 5G logo on its rear, it's identical to the non-5G version.
It has the same 6.67-inch QHD display, Snapdragon 855 chipset, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, triple rear cameras and Android 9 operating system.
While it may look the same, OnePlus has actually had to do some major rearranging under the hood. During testing it found the antenna arrangement it was using in the 4G variant wasn't performing as efficiently in the 5G setup.
This meant the 10 antennas on the 5G model had to be redesigned, which resulted in most of the internals also getting shifted around – plus a larger heat sink, which should provide more effective cooling.
The result is a phone which internally, is completely different in the way it's put together – not that you'd ever know from looking at it.
- Read our in-depth OnePlus 7 Pro review
2pm: check your 5G coverage
Before setting out in search of more 5G, we decided to check the EE website for its 5G coverage maps.
It offers a downloadable map of each of the six cities it's launched 5G in, which gives you a clearer indication of where you'll be able to get 5G, and where it won't be available.
4pm: in search of 5G
A new 5G speed high! Image Credit: TechRadar
Having located a patch of 5G walking distance from the office we set out, but as we approached the coverage area (according to EE's map) our phone still said 4G.
Walking further in and it did, thankfully, switch over to a 5G connection. While the coverage maps will give you a rough idea of where you can get 5G, don't take it as a guarantee – there are still small pockets where it simply doesn't reach in these early days.
Having settled into our new position we ran another speed test on the Fast app – and we can a new high speed with the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G showing 550Mbps. That's an impressive improvement over the speed we got earlier, but as we were now in a quieter part of the city it's not overly surprising, with fewer handsets in the local area.
That said, the speed you get is still highly variable. We ran the test twice more, with results of 320Mbps and 410Mbps. It's still way more than our 4G phone though, which was topping out at around 25Mbps.
5pm: downloading…
While speed tests are all well and good, they don't give us any idea of real world usage. So we downloaded a 1GB video in 'best quality' from Amazon Prime, and it took the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G just 43 seconds to get it on our device.
We then did the same download on our 4G (with a Three SIM) OnePlus 7, and after 43 seconds we only had 20% of the same video downloaded.
This is a very basic example of the power of 5G, and while faster downloads are good, in the coming years 5G will be able to offer much more. However, every new technology has to start somewhere and in the early days it's these fast downloads you'll likely hear a lot about.
We're still in our first 24 hours with the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G, and we'll be updating this article with more information as we go.
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