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Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

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21–30 of 339 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

#21
post #15

I wish I could get a 2G phone. 3G I'd settle for. All I want is email, Maps, Uber and a Camera. Everything else is just addicting time wasting behavior. I love when my plan runs out of fast data and puts me on that throttled level.

Light Phone exists, don't know how good it is.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

#22
post #14

Depends where you are, for me in the center of Hong Kong, with a Huawei phone, it's a net improvement, it's way way faster. I even use it instead of wifi on my phone because my router slows down with distance while 5G stays fast in every room. It consumes more battery so when I need to save I go back to 4G and I notice the slog. Maybe your phone doesnt have a fast chip, your city isn't dense enough to have budget for…

In center of Taipei 5G is spotty, but go out to a country side city and I’ve got 5G everywhere. Go figure :)

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

#23
Its been a clear upgrade for me. I am on T-Mobile and in my apartment i see around 200-300mbps and across Seattle metro area i hit 200mbps consistently.

T-mobile has better coverage here compared to ATT and Verizon because of Mid-band spectrum they got with sprint merger. I think other 2 are in process deploying more mid band spectrum and may be that will improve it in future.

In Seattle I see 5G UC (Marketing term for their MidBand Spectrum) for TMobile pretty much everywhere.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

#24
post #8

Fantastic here, but heavily area dependent, low-latency and I often see speeds above 250Mbps. 20Mbps is not enough for a phone I use for tethering. 5G home internet is a thing here now too (Australia), and in a lot of cases beats the alternative.

Wonder what the difference of electricity cost is between running your home router via 5G and wire.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

#25
I feel it heavily depends on the modem. I used to have a Pixel 5a, which has an SoC (Snapdragon 765G) that was released during the late stages of the transition from LTE to 5G. On that phone, 5G was a terrible experience and my data wouldn't work half the time when I was outside. I switched to a Galaxy Z Flip 4 a few months ago, and 5G is just fine for me since then (i.e. I don't notice a difference compared to LTE). Same carrier, same locations.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

#26
post #15

I wish I could get a 2G phone. 3G I'd settle for. All I want is email, Maps, Uber and a Camera. Everything else is just addicting time wasting behavior. I love when my plan runs out of fast data and puts me on that throttled level.

But email, map or uber use tons of data where 2G and 3G were not decided for? So you will still need a 4G, no?

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

#27
Locally 3g was the most reliable. I think we're working backwards in accessibility of the network. It seemed just a few years ago, all we needed was a tower every so often, now we have towers and microcells. Is it a capacity issue or have we pushed into a spectrum that is more suited to dense cities rather than less dense towns?

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

#28
post #15

I wish I could get a 2G phone. 3G I'd settle for. All I want is email, Maps, Uber and a Camera. Everything else is just addicting time wasting behavior. I love when my plan runs out of fast data and puts me on that throttled level.

In a lot of places there are no longer 2G networks.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me or is 5G strictly worse than LTE?

#29
post #2

Are you using T-mobile or another provider that uses them? My 5G connection is trash, but I just switched up Google Fi, which is using T-Mobile's network. Inside my apartment pictures on websites are loading like it's the early 2000's again. I'm in a major city, I thought that would help.

I'm on Visible, which is a Verizon MVNO.

What make and model is your phone?

Visible is a deprioritized version of Verizon's cellular network, so when your on a busy tower you will see slower speeds than postpaid Verizon Wireless customers. Verizon also happens to have the slowest network over the last few years since they have the most customers using it (nearly 130 million users) and smaller spectrum holdings than the other two major cellular networks.

Verizon also chose to deploy 5G service using spectrum sharing, so 4G and 5G speeds are very similar: https://www.zdnet.com/article/verizon-5g-dss-isnt-the-5g-you...

T-Mobile is using dedicated (and much larger sized) low and midband spectrum for their 5G connectivity, plus they have almost half as many customers, resulting in much faster speeds.

That being said 5G is still in its infancy, 5G Standalone is really needed to lower your phone's power use (so its not connecting to LTE and 5G at the same time), reduce latency and jitter, and allow 5G to stretch further for a more stable connection.

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