The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is the overall fastest 5G phone in the US and Canada, beating the Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max in both countries, according to new results from Ookla Speedtest.
This agrees with our initial test results of the Galaxy S22 series, where we found that the S22 line’s Qualcomm X65 modem had significantly better low-signal performance than last year’s X60 modem, which Apple uses in its iPhone 13 line.
Apple is expected to upgrade to the X65 with the iPhone 14 this fall.
The results provided to us by Ookla have one other surprise: The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 actually comes in second place in the US with a 100.83Mbps speed that’s very similar to the iPhone 13 line. That makes sense as the Z Fold3 also uses the X60, like the iPhone 13 and Galaxy S21 lines do. I didn’t put it on the chart above because the Canadian results didn’t have the Z Fold3 in them.
Ookla also affirmed that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, used by the Samsung S22 line, has better overall download speeds in crowdsourced testing than the X60 5G in the iPhone. In the US, that particular difference was 112.68Mbps to 95.54Mbps.
These results come from Ookla’s Speedtest Intelligence database, which included tests from thousands of mobile phones on all of the US and Canadian carriers.
Using the same results, Ookla found that T-Mobile kept its crown for the fastest median 5G download speeds in the first quarter of 2021 at 191.12Mbps, but Verizon’s recent launch of C-band 5G had a real positive effect, pushing Verizon’s 5G speeds from 78.52Mbps in the previous quarter up to 107.25Mbps.
AT&T came in a distant third place at 68.43Mbps as it hasn’t rolled out much mid-band 5G yet. The carrier has said it’s saving its major mid-band moves for later this year and into 2023.
We’re about to head out to provide much more detail on the differences between networks with our Best Mobile Network 2022 drive test, starting this May. We’ll be driving to 30 US cities and using Samsung Galaxy S22 series phones, which we now know have the networks’ best performance. Look for our results in June.
Disclosure: Ookla and PCMag are both owned by Ziff Davis.
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