Some operators like showing off their coverage maps on their sites, claiming full 5G or LTE coverage in entire cities and pretending small dead spots couldn't possibly exist. But we all know the reality is quite different and the only way to find out if your new apartment, office, or temporary vacation home is well covered is to just go there and see for yourself — or ask someone who lives nearby to check it. Now you can do that remotely through the Speedtest app.

In its latest update, Speedtest has rolled out more detailed coverage maps for network operators. Instead of the old, vague light-to-dark color scheme for coverage, things are much more precise. You can zoom in on any city and get down to street-level to check the prevalent type of connectivity there by operator: None, 2G/3G, LTE, and 5G. The data is collected based on geolocated speed tests performed by your and other people's devices, then is calculated and displayed as an average across a ~300ft x ~300ft square.

Above: New detailed coverage maps. Below: Old, more general maps.

WHAT'S NEW

Check out our new Coverage Maps! Explore mobile network coverage maps based on real-world data gathered by the Speedtest app. Visualize many mobile carrier networks’ availability down to the street level, right in the app.

If you rely on Speedtest to diagnose connectivity issues and keep your internet service provider and carriers honest, we'd be thrilled if you would leave us some feedback on Google Play. Thanks and happy testing!

The data covers most of the world, from big cities down to small ones, and can be extremely handy when planning ahead for a vacation, move, hike, or stay in the woods. For now, the maps are only available for mobile networks, but I hope Speedtest could implement them for home broadband too. It'd be nice to know how an area's coverage fairs with a certain provider versus another.

The new detailed maps are live in v4.5.30 of Speedtest, which is available on the Play Store and APK Mirror.