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I have a Pixel 6A on T-Mobile. I keep 5G turned off because it's usually slower and flakier than LTE, visibly chews through the battery (a percentage point every couple of minutes), and heats up the phone.
Turns out Google pushed the 6 series out before the OS was "ready" and "forgot" to tell anyone
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.
Oh you can get one except us providers have turned off their 2g base stations
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?
If you're in an area with mid-band 5G (5G UC on T-Mobile USA, 5G UW on Verizon, 5G+ on AT&T), 5G will provide a meaningfully better experience most of the time. TDD (time-divided rather than frequency divided) 5G on mid-band spectrum is seeing great results. T-Mobile's 5G network is averaging 217Mbps (including both their low-band and mid-band networks, but it shows how much mid-band 5G can do).
If you're in an area with low-band 5G, it's complicated. If you're on Verizon, they're using DSS (dynamic spectrum sharing) to use the same spectrum for both LTE and 5G. This means that the network is constantly context switching between LTE and 5G and it provides pretty crappy service. If you're on T-Mobile, their low-band 5G network is using new spectrum and does often offer some moderate advantages. Another complication is that you might be sharing that 5G with all the heavier users while an LTE channel is less used. You could also be connecting to a tower farther away to get a 5G signal.
It's probably not that it's higher frequencies since you're probably in an area where it's using similar frequencies. I'd say that this is more likely carrier-related than 5G related.
Having the 5G logo on your phone doesnt necessarily mean your phone is speaking 5G. It's...complicated. - Most US operators do not have ubiquitous 5G radio coverage, so, they do what is called 5G NSA where your traffic ultimately ends up veing processed by the 4G core infrastructure that they have. Which is already overloaded and a bit creaky. - Some operators can do real 5G, "5G SA", where the whole flow end to end…
> They still have scars from their failure to capture the value of smartphone applications in the LTE era. That's makes a lot of sense and truly, fuck telcos.
OK, I will bite. Comparing 5G vs 4G as Technology is completely different to 5G vs 4G in real world implementation. That is a bit like asking if Core i9 is faster than Core i7 without knowing the clock speed, core count, cache and power budget. Or for Software developers comparing Python vs Ruby without knowing the code and VM, JIT or not Most 5G network around the world are deployed in higher frequency spectrum. Hen…
> Stand Alone 5G without relaying on 4G Network Back End What's the difference in the backends? Is it just a question of bandwidth, or is there something more?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is I have no self control. If I could manually switch it I can't be trusted.
Uninstalling the apps helps somewhat. Facebook and Reddit have terrible mobile web experiences, which helps even more!
It wouldn't be so bad if phones were better at switching to the best available signal, they they could use the efficient 5G connection when it's available, but fall back to 4G when the 5G is blocked by a building or something (which I gather is more common due to the high frequencies used in 5G). But they seem to insist on connecting to a crappy 5G signal even if an excellent 4G signal is available. Same with 3G, whi…
It wouldn't be so bad if phones were better at switching to the best available signal, they they could use the efficient 5G connection when it's available, but fall back to 4G when the 5G is blocked by a building or something (which I gather is more common due to the high frequencies used in 5G). But they seem to insist on connecting to a crappy 5G signal even if an excellent 4G signal is available. Same with 3G, whi…
This is inexcusable. I thought my phone was defective for weeks. I would get ZERO data, move 100 yards and have data again. After some Deep Thought™ I disabled 5G and could magically use the Internet from my phone again.