5G Cell Service?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I think the major US carriers have started to offer 5G cell service in the last year or two. I believe the area where I live is one in which it’s available and my cell phone (Apple iPhone 12 Pro) supports it, but I believe my current cell phone service plan does not. I’m thinking of switching cell plans or even providers and am wondering if I should get 5G service.

TLDR, has anyone used 5G service? What was your experience? What can you do with 5G that you couldn’t previously do? Is it all that?

2

I have it and it is quite a bit faster.
But it isn’t game changing here yet. Maybe once more cells are up.

3

Same questions. I’m in the market for both a new phone and a new service provider. I can get a Pixel 4a for $350. For another hundred bucks, I can get the 5a, with 5G.

Looking at the specs and everything, I guess I’ll get somewhat faster data transfer? Okay. Nice, but not essential.

Other than that, I’m not sure what about 5G is so amazing that I have to have it. I’m open to the possibility that there is something, so I’m asking the same questions as the OP, I guess.

4

One thing to keep in mind, are you a buy a new phone each year kind of person or keep it 3-5 years kind of person.

5g is still early in the rollout and might not be mature in suburban areas for another 2-3 years.

So if you only buy a new phone every 3-5 years, get one that is 5g ready at least.

If you get a new one annually and don’t live in a major city, wait.

My phone was basically dying, I keep them 3-5 years and so went ahead and got a 5g phone and we upgraded our plan to 5g.

5

How have you used the 5G service that took advantage of the faster speed?

6

Pretty much just surfing. But I did try streaming Netflix from a park and it worked great. That was just testing though. I don’t like watch TV on my phone.

7

I don’t watch TV on my phone either. And at home and at work, I connect the phone to WiFi so I’m guessing it’s not going to do anything for me right now. But I am a nerd who likes playing with bleeding edge technology.

8

Sorry for all the questions, but the way that the big carriers (ATT, T-Mobile and Verizon) have been hyping it, and the estimates of how much it’s going to cost for deployment of the fastest technology, I wonder what’s the point.

9

One thing 5g is better at is hotspots. If you need to run your laptop somewhere without WiFi or sketchy WiFi, the new 5g phones seem to be very good.

At one point we were in a public space and running 3 laptops off my daughter’s 5g phone. She does watch a lot of videos on her phone.

10

I think down the road a few years, ATT & Verizon are looking at 5g as a cable replacement. I don’t know the details, but as 5g matures, you would get a wireless router to provide WiFi for your home instead of a Cable or Fiber connection.

Younger people do love streaming on their phones. 5g is huge for that.

It really just boils down to more speed and more data throughput in the end.

As you can probably tell, I’m no expert and not a power user when it comes to phones. Hell, I still use them as phones, preferring it to texting.

11

As far as I understand it, 5G can be implemented in three different frequency ranges. The lower frequency has the greatest range, but the slowest speed, comparable to 4G. The middle frequency has less range, but is a little faster. The highest frequency has the best speed, but the shortest range. They have to use many more 5G antennae to cover an area if they are using the highest frequency. In many places they plan to implement all three frequency bands, and your phone may be able to access whichever one works best at your location. In some places they plan to skip the low frequency band - perhaps in cities where it is more worth the effort of putting up many new antennae. In rural areas, it may not be worth the expense to put up the high-frequency (fast, but short range) antennae, and instead cover a larger area with the slower low-frequency antennae. So, if you live in an urban area, 5G may give a satisfactory bump in speed, but in rural areas it may be only a little better than 4G.

12

In my experience with the MVNO carrier Simple Mobile, I didn’t need to get a new plan, or even a new SIM card. I took the card from my 4G phone and stuck it on my new 5G phone, and it simply worked. The 5G indicator lights up and I’m getting around 500 Mbps download speeds. Most of the other carriers I’ve seen are offering 5G for the same rate as 4G. It may depend on the age of your phone’s SIM if it will work on 5G or if you need a new SIM card. It’s worth asking your carrier.

13

Okay, former T-Mobile tech support person here, so I have some knowledge but it’s out of date - So consider this ‘general’ info.

@Retzbu_Tox has the best take on the information so far, and in general the majority of the 5g rollout has been the low band, especially for T-Mobile, while a few carriers for deep urban areas are going with the super high (often referred to as mm wave) frequencies. In real world situations the low frequency 5g is 15-20% faster than the ‘average’ 4g/LTE speeds for downloads, less for uploads, and it’s still unclear if that will remain the same as there is more load on the networks, but appears to be pretty steady.

The high frequency stuff is amazingly fast, as in up to several times 4g/lte speeds . . . but in the words of my coworker, a freaking tree in the way can cut your speeds due to the incredibly bad penetration. Do not expect good performance from these techs inside a building for example. And it’s build around a mini-tower pretty much on a block by block basis.

For most casual users, you can see low band 5G as “4G +”, an improvement, but not a huge one, with minimal loss of performance inside or if more distant from a tower. Most major carrier plans already include 5G service for calls and on-phone data (up to the limits of your plan) but generally have much more stringent limitations on 5G speeds for tethered/mobile hotspot devices.

As an example, the current Magenta plan from T-Mobile only allows up to 5GB of high speed data on mobile hotspot without a plan upgrade.

I generally upgrade my phones every 3-4 years, still rocking my Pixel 3a, and would have been buying a 5a if it had been available through the carrier, rather than just Google directly (COVID has hurt my finances to the point where I can’t afford to take a minimal trade it, need those carrier incentives to make it work).

If you’re planning on buying a new phone -anyway-, yeah, get a 5G phone for ‘looking ahead’, but I wouldn’t buy a new phone to just get 5G unless there’s a stupidly amazing trade-in option. Recently (and still as of yesterday) T-Mobile post-paid customers could trade in ANY working, undamaged smartphone for a pretty basic One Plus 5g smartphone (approx $220 value), on up to 4 lines. You did have to pay taxes up front, and it’s a 2 year financing with 2 years of rebates, so it’s a retention method, but great if you have (like me) a box of old, undamaged, but working cells phones. I got rid of several old Galaxy Core Primes which were cheapos back in 2014 when they were new.

14

Yes, this is where I noticed a big difference. I had to use my phone as a hotspot for my work computer for a week, and it worked remarkably well, including for Teams video meetings. I also had to use it at one point to provide the connection for our Chromecast and two tablets while I was also using it for work. It was fine for that too, although I’m not sure it could’ve handled a Teams call.

When I’ve checked, it hasn’t been super fast, but significantly faster than my typical 4G. Just now, inside my house, it was about 30 mbps download, which I think is around 50% faster than my 4G typically was in this location. My WiFi is still faster when it’s available.