On one roughly six-hour trip near the southern end of Lake Michigan, Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and Google’s Pixel 11 Pro Fold each registered 5G just over 98% of the time on T-Mobile; Motorola’s Razr Fold registered 5G 89% of the time. Those figures favor the Samsung and Google phones on this route, but the test also exposed a problem with nPerf’s signal-type labels, so its apparent mmWave results should not be read literally.
What the road-trip test measured
ZDNET author Adam Doud mounted the three foldables on the same tripod arrangement, about a foot apart and level with the back-seat windows. Their positions stayed fixed throughout the trip, a choice intended to keep measurement conditions consistent. Each phone was connected to a 4Patriots Alphacase Elite solar generator, and nPerf recorded the network data.
The drive took about six hours. It began in Streamwood, Illinois, continued on city streets toward Calumet City, Indiana, then headed east across north-central Indiana to Valparaiso and north to Benton Harbor, Michigan. The return route included I-94, I-294 and I-290. The test used T-Mobile; it was not a comparison among carriers.
Doud says he chose T-Mobile because in his earlier testing it had generally been more consistent, though not always the fastest, and was the only network in those earlier tests to return a standalone 5G connection. That is background to his carrier choice, not a result established by this three-phone trip.
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Reported 5G connection time by phone
| Phone | Reported time with a 5G signal | What the figure means |
|---|---|---|
| Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra | Just over 98% | Adam Doud’s report of this T-Mobile trip in 2026; a route-specific result, not a general reception rating. |
| Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold | Just over 98% | Adam Doud’s report of this T-Mobile trip in 2026; a route-specific result, not a general reception rating. |
| Motorola Razr Fold | 89% | Adam Doud’s report of this T-Mobile trip in 2026; a route-specific result, not a general reception rating. |
In this run, the Samsung and Google phones were close to one another, while the Motorola had a lower reported 5G share. Doud’s conclusion that phone choice may not matter much between Samsung and Google applies to this route sample, not to all locations, carriers or conditions. Read Doud’s report at Yahoo Tech.
Why the mmWave readings are questionable
nPerf classified Samsung as connected to mmWave for 42% of the trip and Google for 49%. Doud considered those proportions implausible for the country-road route, given mmWave’s short range. The Razr Fold appeared as mmWave at one point in a series of more than 9,000 data points, even though Doud reports that the model lacks an mmWave antenna.
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After Doud asked nPerf to investigate, he reports that the app appeared to be confusing T-Mobile Ultra Capacity (UC) connectivity with mmWave. That means the 42% and 49% labels are not reliable evidence that the two phones spent those shares of the trip on actual mmWave. Doud says a broader 5G category can be derived by combining the app’s nr-nsa, nr-sa and nr-nsa-mmw categories despite the apparent classification issue.
What the Motorola result does—and does not—show
The Razr Fold has six internal antennas, but that did not translate into the highest measured share of 5G connection time in this trip. Doud suggests the phone may have held onto a faint LTE signal rather than switching to 5G; this is his theory, not a mechanism demonstrated by the measurements. The reported result supports a narrower observation: the Razr showed less 5G connection time than the Samsung and Google phones on this route.
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How far to generalize from these results
This was one trip with three phones, one carrier and one fixed mounting arrangement. The devices were kept in set positions rather than rotated, and the report does not establish how much position affected the comparison. Nor does it provide repeated runs, matched measurements across other carriers, or results from regions beyond the Illinois–Indiana–Michigan area near Lake Michigan’s southern end. Doud notes that western areas were not tested in this series.
For a stronger general comparison, useful additions would include repeat drives, rotating device positions, validation of the measurement app’s network classifications, and separate reporting of standalone and non-standalone 5G. Without those controls and broader coverage, the figures are useful as a snapshot of one route—not a national ranking of T-Mobile service or foldable-phone reception.
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