The Samsung Galaxy S10 5G is now available in
Germany. You can buy it from Samsung.com or from Deutsche Telekom. Soon, it
will be available through Vodafone as well. It costs € 1,200 in the only available
configuration - 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage.
Germany’s wireless authority (the BnetzA) just
finished auctioning off 41 blocks of spectrum between 2GHz and 3.6GHz, worth a
total of € 6.5 billion. DT paid the most, € 2.17 billion, followed by Vodafone, € 1.88
billion. Also, there’s a brand new carrier, 1&1 Drillisch, which will
operate as an MVNO.
As you can imagine, there’s no operational 5G
network in Germany. DT does say it 80% of its existing antennas are ready to be
upgraded to 5G and there are some test antennas installed in Berlin, Darmstadt
and the Port of Hamburg, but that's about it.
Until the next-gen networks are ready, the Galaxy
S10 5G will have to operate on LTE networks. You still get a great screen and
one of the best cameras on the market. Both Deutsche Telekom and
Vodafone are complaining about how expensive the 5G auction was. Indeed, it
topped the expectations of € 3-5 billion. For comparison, the LTE auction
brought in € 5.1 billion. All that is to say don’t expect 5G data plans to be
cheap.
