Galaxy S8's gigabit LTE speeds won't be of any use to customers in South Korea

We reported last week that the Galaxy S8 is the first smartphone on the market that can hit gigabit LTE speeds. The Snapdragon 835 and Exynos 8895-powered variants of this handset both feature integrated modems capable of hitting mobile data speeds of up to 1 Gbps.

T-Mobile even gave us a demonstration of the Galaxy S8 reaching gigabit speeds recently. However, there's no wide network infrastructure in place so this particular feature is currently a bit ahead of its time.

So the gigabit LTE feature won't be of any use to customers in Samsung's home country as well where existing network environments allow for a maximum theoretical speed of 600 Mbps and that too in major cities. The maximum speed doesn't exceed 300 Mbps in smaller cities.

However, the country's major carriers which include KT and SK Telecom are currently testing the Galaxy S8. They are capable of supporting the four-band carrier aggregation but it will take time to reach speeds of up to 1 Gbps and the actual available speed is obviously going to differ from region to region.

Simply put, it's going to be a while before the full potential of the Galaxy S8's gigabit LTE modem can be realized.

Adnan Farooqui - Executive Editor

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First Samsung device: SGH-E900

Adnan Farooqui is a long-term writer at SamMobile. Based in Pakistan, his interests include technology, finance, Swiss watches and Formula 1. His tendency to write long posts betrays his inclination to being a man of few words.

Via Phone Samsung Galaxy S8