I got a 5G capable phone a few months back, and I can't say I've noticed a difference from my old one. (Aside from the new phone being more expensive, worse UI, slower, heavier, unwieldy, filled with ads, and constantly prompting me to create a "Samsung account".)
5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows
221–230 of 376 posts
Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
The answer is yes. But it's not just about speed. The higher speeds drain the battery faster. I say this because we currently use an old 2014 phone as a house phone for the family. It's set to 2G to take calls, and switches to 4g for the actual voice call. We only have to charge it once every 2-3 weeks, if not longer. (Old Samsung phones also had Ultra Power Saving mode which helps with that) 2G is being shutdown tho…
Given that it's a house phone, have you tried enabling Wi-Fi Calling (VoWiFi) in the carrier settings (if you have that option), and then putting the phone in Airplane Mode with wi-fi enabled? AFAIK that should be fairly less impactful on battery. (Alternately, if you don't have the option to use VoWiFi, you could take literally any phone/tablet/etc; install a softphone app on it; get a cheap number from a VoIP numbe…
Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows
#223We live in a rural location, so we have redundant 5G/Starlink. It's getting pretty reasonable these days, with download speeds reaching 0.5 gbit/sec per link, and latency is acceptable at ~20ms. The main challenge is the upload speed; pretty much all the ISPs allocate much more spectrum for download rather than upload. If we could improve one thing with future wireless tech, I think upload would be a great candidate.
Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows
#224Time to make it cheap!
Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
The answer is yes. But it's not just about speed. The higher speeds drain the battery faster. I say this because we currently use an old 2014 phone as a house phone for the family. It's set to 2G to take calls, and switches to 4g for the actual voice call. We only have to charge it once every 2-3 weeks, if not longer. (Old Samsung phones also had Ultra Power Saving mode which helps with that) 2G is being shutdown tho…
I actually miss the concept of house phones. Instead of exclusively person-to-person communication, families would call other families to catch up and sometimes even pass the phone around to talk to the grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc.
Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows
#226OK so someone has noticed that you "only" need 15MBs-1 for a 4K stream. Jolly good. Now let's address latency - that entire article only mentioned the word once and it looks like it was by accident. Latency isn't cool but it is why your Teams/Zoom/whatevs call sounds a bit odd. You are probably used to the weird over-talking episodes you get when a sound stream goes somewhat async. You put up with it but you really s…
There is no way that "15MBs-1" is more clear than "15MB/s", especially in an environment which lacks the ability to give text superscript styling.
Perhaps we should insist on more from formatting from above. That's probably a post processing thing for ... gAI 8)
Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows
#227I got a 5G capable phone a few months back, and I can't say I've noticed a difference from my old one. (Aside from the new phone being more expensive, worse UI, slower, heavier, unwieldy, filled with ads, and constantly prompting me to create a "Samsung account".)
What's any of that have to do with 5G? On 2 bars of 5G right now and I get 650Mbit download speed, it's significantly faster than 4G.
Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
My public utility is bad at its job because it has literally zero incentive to be cheap, and thus my utilities are expensive
> it has literally zero incentive to be cheap Do private utilities have any incentive to be cheap? The reason we have utility regulations in the first place is because utilities are natural monopolies with literally zero incentive to be cheap. On the contrary, they are highly incentivized to push up prices as much as possible because they have their customers over a barrel.
...which is unusual with many utilities, but is also pretty common with wireless carriers in much of the world.
Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
The answer is yes. But it's not just about speed. The higher speeds drain the battery faster. I say this because we currently use an old 2014 phone as a house phone for the family. It's set to 2G to take calls, and switches to 4g for the actual voice call. We only have to charge it once every 2-3 weeks, if not longer. (Old Samsung phones also had Ultra Power Saving mode which helps with that) 2G is being shutdown tho…
I actually miss the concept of house phones. Instead of exclusively person-to-person communication, families would call other families to catch up and sometimes even pass the phone around to talk to the grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc.
Similarly, I find that it’s hard to catch family on their cell and much easier when I call their home.
Re: 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows
#230>Regulators may also have to consider whether fewer operators may be better for a country, with perhaps only a single underlying fixed and mobile network in many places—just as utilities for electricity, water, gas, and the like are often structured around single (or a limited set of) operators. There are no words to describe how stupid this is.