Worth getting 5g phone

Irish Gunner

Possible looking for a new phone in the coming months.

Is it worth getting a 5g phones and what ones are out there?

Currently using one plus so is the 7 5g?

Tazzimus

https://www.gsmarena.com/oneplus_7_pro_5g-9704.php

Clareman

How long do you normally get out of a phone? What network are you on? How important is non WiFi speed to you?

Personally I go through spurts of phones and am getting a Note 10 now so I went for the 5G version cause chances are I'll still have the phone then, if not it'll help the resell value.

Tesco Mobile still isn't on 4G so if you are on their network 5G mightn't be an issue for a while.

I'm almost always near a WiFi network so rarely will that be an issue for me

The high horse brigade

Not worth considering it yet as the networks have only started to roll it out, maybe on your next phone after this one

riclad

What s the advantage of 5g,
in theory its very fast .
I see no point in buying a phone to download gigabytes of data ,
if i want to do that i,ll use wifi on my phone ,
or copy music onto my sd card from my pc.
5 g uses different parts of the spectrum ,
they will need to build a lot more cell towers ,each cell has to be connected to a fibre network.Cell towers will need to be located close to each other compared with 3g or 4g towers .
It will cost billions .
i think maybe in 2-3 years there will be 5 g in citys and towns ,
in rural area,s the phone will switch back to 3g mode .
I have no interest in buying a 5g phone .
It will likely be more expensive than current phones as each phone will
need 3g and 5g chips and antenna,s .
5g networks may be used iot and industrial devices
but thats not of interest to the average phone user.
From reading articles on some tech websites ,
it looks as if 5 g for most users will feel slightly faster
than a 4g phone if you are in an area with very good signal strength
And with a data cap of 10 - 20gig per month ,
I can see no point in buying a 5g phone even it was sold
for the same price as a old 3g phone with the same
screen and storage spec,s .
Its like if i had a car that goes at 100 mph ,
i will not buy a new car that can reach a speed of 200mph .
Thats more expensive than my old car .
Of course when the 5g network is built we will see
are the new phones significantly better and faster at streaming music
and video than the phones we have now .
So its too early to give a verdict on the value of 5g .

Bluefoam

riclad wrote: »

5 g uses different parts of the spectrum ,
they will need to build a lot more cell towers ,each cell has to be connected to a fibre network.Cell towers will need to be located close to each other compared with 3g or 4g towers .
It will cost billions .

5G can use the existing towers and if Nokia equipment is used can piggyback on existing intrastucture. It is far less expensive to implement that pervious G's. Vodafone have already switched on the network in Dublin. It can also be used as a home network in place of broadband and is ideal for laptops etc... it is far more suitable for accessories, smartdevices and stuff etc.

rizzee

Vodafone going live in a few cities tomorrow according to their website & RTE. Will be releasing a 5G device tomorrow and another at the end of the month. Any reports on what they are?

Edited to add : I see they're advertising their Bill Plan details as 5G ready when you go to buy a 4G phone. Will be a bit misleading to some customers who wouldn't know!

Irish Gunner

Thanks for the replies

On 3 at the moment and will hold off until 5g gets more active happy enought with 4g and dont use phone as hotspot

Lucifer

I already get around 100mb/s on 4g with Vodafone. This is capable of probably 4 x 4k streams. How much faster do I need on a phone with 1 screen.

gmisk

Irish Gunner wrote: »

Thanks for the replies

On 3 at the moment and will hold off until 5g gets more active happy enought with 4g and dont use phone as hotspot

I am with 3 at the minute the only way I think I would get 4g (never mind 5g) was if I was sitting on one of their masts!

gmisk

Irish Gunner wrote: »

Thanks for the replies

On 3 at the moment and will hold off until 5g gets more active happy enought with 4g and dont use phone as hotspot

I am with 3 at the minute the only way I think I would get 4g (never mind 5g) was if I was sitting on one of their masts!

Ironically posted twice - because of crappy 3 signal....

Lackadaisical

I wouldn't bother just yet. They'll be launched with much hype like 4G and 3G before it and then they'll be normal a few months later and there'll be tons of options. Right now you'll be gouged for one and also things like chipsets improve and battery use goes down.

I'd give it a while.

I'm tending to see 5G as overhyped. It's potentially handy but I think really it was the previous step, to 4G that made the massive difference. Suddenly mobile services were actually broadband and pretty much ubiquitous and cheap. All 5G does is bring them up a few notches. It doesn't really fundamentally change the experience, despite what the networks are all hyping about. I mean LTE+ can already deliver 100Mbit/s+ and plenty of bog-standard networks here are delivering >50mbit/s on existing services.

The biggest change that I'd be looking for is massively enhanced battery life. I'm grand with LTE/LTE+ for now. There aren't any services I use on my phone that need any higher speeds than I'm getting on 4G. I'd like to see the LTE networks enhanced though and coverage to improve.

You should start to see big improvements on 4G though as 5G rolls out as they backhaul over the same infrastructure, so you'll have a lot more LTE+ with less congested links to the core network.

It's cool to have, but it's not exactly revolutionary in the way the rollout of 4G and was.

yellowbear

Lackadaisical wrote: »

I wouldn't bother just yet. They'll be launched with much hype like 4G and 3G before it and then they'll be normal a few months later and there'll be tons of options. Right now you'll be gouged for one and also things like chipsets improve and battery use goes down.

I'd give it a while.

I'm tending to see 5G as overhyped. It's potentially handy but I think really it was the previous step, to 4G that made the massive difference. Suddenly mobile services were actually broadband and pretty much ubiquitous and cheap. All 5G does is bring them up a few notches. It doesn't really fundamentally change the experience, despite what the networks are all hyping about. I mean LTE+ can already deliver 100Mbit/s+ and plenty of bog-standard networks here are delivering >50mbit/s on existing services.

The biggest change that I'd be looking for is massively enhanced battery life. I'm grand with LTE/LTE+ for now. There aren't any services I use on my phone that need any higher speeds than I'm getting on 4G. I'd like to see the LTE networks enhanced though and coverage to improve.

You should start to see big improvements on 4G though as 5G rolls out as they backhaul over the same infrastructure, so you'll have a lot more LTE+ with less congested links to the core network.

It's cool to have, but it's not exactly revolutionary in the way the rollout of 4G and was.

But say if I buy a phone now and lock in to a contract for two years will I regret being stuck with a 4g phone this time next year? That's the dilemma I'm facing at the min.

The high horse brigade

yellowbear wrote: »

But say if I buy a phone now and lock in to a contract for two years will I regret being stuck with a 4g phone this time next year? That's the dilemma I'm facing at the min.

Don't be daft, buy a phone, then you can get a 30 day contract for as little as a tenner a month

Clareman

The way I look at it I was delighted with WAP when I had nothing else, then data was brilliant, 3g was a real game changer. 4g was amazing and now if I don't have 4g+ I feel like I'm in the third world, no doubt when 5G comes along it'll be great but as its in cities only I probably won't see a difference. As I said earlier, I'm getting a phone now and the 10% to get the 5G option is a no brainer for me.

Royale with Cheese

I only bought a OnePlus 7 pro two months back. I didn't know 5g in Ireland was this close and also assumed Vodafone would charge a fortune for it when it was released. Turns out I now get it for free buy my €800 phone can't access it, derp.

Chibs

I have the S10 5G. I bought it for the extra features it has over s10+. I didn't think 5G would launch this soon look forward to trying it.

rizzee

Mate 20 X 5G Available on Vodafone today.

KildareP

Royale with Cheese wrote: »

I only bought a OnePlus 7 pro two months back. I didn't know 5g in Ireland was this close and also assumed Vodafone would charge a fortune for it when it was released. Turns out I now get it for free buy my €800 phone can't access it, derp.

I don't think you can get the 5G version of the OP7 from OnePlus though, you have to buy it through a network operator. In the UK it's only available on EE.

Lackadaisical

Unless rumors are wrong Apple is about to shoot itself the foot and launch a 4G iPhone 11 in September, thus causing all of its upgrades to wait for the 5G version. Seems they’re slowly losing the plot.

The Nal

5G: what it will and what it won’t

biebiebie

Imho.
Personally I'd hold off until 2020.
Hopefully there'll be more budget friendly 5G chipsets out then, as well as the flagship 865 which is said to have 5G built in (unlike the 855).

Anyhow the areas you'll actually get 5g are incredibly sparse currently. I personally perceive the recent Vodafone 5G release as being more headline grabbing than actually being life changing at the current point in time (unless you're lucky enough live/work in a 5g area).

I'll live with 4g for now, but I'm also looking forward to the prospect of buying a 5g handset next year. And hopefully the network rollout gathers some momentum by then too.

AllForIt

riclad wrote: »

What s the advantage of 5g,
in theory its very fast .
I see no point in buying a phone to download gigabytes of data ,

Unless of course you use you phone as a hotspot to power all your home internet devices like I do. And have been doing for years. My 4g is more than adequate for me though and I don't intend to upgrade my fone for at least another 2 years.

biebiebie

Personally I'll be more interested to see how 5G broadband works out, with both pricing and quality/speed in mind.

If 5G broadband becomes a viable alternative (where available, cities first I presume) then it should make the market more competitive, to the advantage of the consumer I'd hope.

Plus if you then have 5g on your phone from a different network, then you can split your usage accros two networks. And one can act as a backup to the other (when you're home) should you ever need it. Think network redundancy, important if you work from home.

Okay so maybe not everyone's use case, but there's some food for thought.

lawred2

I don't think 4G has even reached sufficient ubiquity to be honest.

So who knows what is in store for 5G. Maybe the operators will cease the 4G rollout and push 5G instead.

Either way back haul contention is still going to be an issue

Lackadaisical

The other thing to remember is the 5G updates mean more backhaul capacity that will also be used for 4G LTE and LTE Advanced.

I don’t honestly see the huge selling point of 5G over LTE Advanced (4G+) it’s very very fast is it’s got decent backhaul.

Atlantic Dawn

Can someone explain why someone would need 5G on their handset? (Thethering aside). Perhaps I am missing something, 4G is more speed than I will ever need for use just on my handset.

_Kaiser_

yellowbear wrote: »

But say if I buy a phone now and lock in to a contract for two years will I regret being stuck with a 4g phone this time next year? That's the dilemma I'm facing at the min.

Unlikely.. Currently 5G is currently just a marketing tool really. A means to sell more phones and contracts.

At the end of the day it's still a phone and 4G/4G+ is more than enough for current usage cases. I know that a lot of people here (on a specialist tech forum) will use streaming services, but how many "average Joe's" will be watching Netflix on a 5-6" screen at all, never mind in 4K?

Plus unlike even 4G, high speed WiFi is pretty much available everywhere these days. 5G becomes redundant if you have a decent wireless connection.

Buy your phone if you want to and don't worry about it, but I'd agree with the point above that you would get better value with a 30 day sim only contract

KildareP

Lackadaisical wrote: »

Unless rumors are wrong Apple is about to shoot itself the foot and launch a 4G iPhone 11 in September, thus causing all of its upgrades to wait for the 5G version. Seems they’re slowly losing the plot.

Apple have never been pioneers.

They've always sat it out on every new technology, be that 3G, 4G, NFC, high speed charging.

Nonetheless it has worked pretty well for them to date.

True 5G coverage is going to be so sparse as to be useless as a truly mobile service for another year or so (fine if you were static in a 5G cell which, let's face it, will either be at home or work where you more than likely have WiFi anyway).

And I said "true 5G" (:)) above because AT&T in the US is approaching the whole 5G thing a little differently to here in Europe, they have rolled out "fake" 5G which is basically just 4G+ with several carriers aggregated together which gives a "fast enough" browsing experience.

Clareman

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

Can someone explain why someone would need 5G on their handset? (Thethering aside). Perhaps I am missing something, 4G is more speed than I will ever need for use just on my handset.

Because 28k was more than enough internet before 56k came along, then there was ISDN that was loads, then you could have dual ISDN which was loads, then there was 512k before the jump to 1mbit which was amazing and could do everything you ever needed, then there was a 3mbit etc. etc. etc. Personally I had 360 meg broadband at home which I've since upgraded to 1gbit, complete and utter waste of time as my wifi is only 250mbit but I still have it.

Just because you're ok with what you have now doesn't mean you be in a year or so time

Samson1

Testing a Note 10+ 5G on the Verizon 5G network in Providence, Rhode Island:- https://www.pcworld.com/article/3434608/samsung-galaxy-note-10-5g-verizon-speed-tests.html

Sounds like it is going to take time to get their 5G network expanded. Are we going to see similar issues here on the initial roll-out of 5G?? :


.... "So for now, getting 5G on your phone requires an awareness of where you are in relation to the nodes. Turn a corner—or even turn around—and you might drop the signal. " .......

..... "The battery definitely took a hit when compared to the regular Note 10+, going from 95 percent to 52 percent after a solid 2.5 hours of testing and downloads. Granted, that’s more than most people will do with it during such a short time period, but even when keeping it in my pocket, it drained noticeably faster than the non-5G Note 10+."....

......"Trying to connect to 5G inside a building was nearly impossible"........

Clareman

Isn't there confusion in a lot of places in the US where what they are calling 5G is actually 4G+

AlmightyCushion

Clareman wrote: »

Isn't there confusion in a lot of places in the US where what they are calling 5G is actually 4G+

Yeah, AT&T started calling their 4G network 5Ge.

biebiebie

Samson1 wrote: »

Testing a Note 10+ 5G on the Verizon 5G network in Providence, Rhode Island:- https://www.pcworld.com/article/3434608/samsung-galaxy-note-10-5g-verizon-speed-tests.html

Sounds like it is going to take time to get their 5G network expanded. Are we going to see similar issues here on the initial roll-out of 5G?? :


.... "So for now, getting 5G on your phone requires an awareness of where you are in relation to the nodes. Turn a corner—or even turn around—and you might drop the signal. " .......

..... "The battery definitely took a hit when compared to the regular Note 10+, going from 95 percent to 52 percent after a solid 2.5 hours of testing and downloads. Granted, that’s more than most people will do with it during such a short time period, but even when keeping it in my pocket, it drained noticeably faster than the non-5G Note 10+."....

......"Trying to connect to 5G inside a building was nearly impossible"........

Just some thoughts.. Not exact science!
4g consumes more battery than 3g.
And as far as I'm aware 5g will be similar, hence 5g phones appear to have somewhat larger battery capacities.

However if they were experiencing connectivity issues during their testing, and the 5g signal was only in a very small specific area, then possibly the battery was depleted more than normal trying to cope with poor signal and changing back and forth between 4g/5g.

It could also be like this in real life at the beginning until 5g becomes more established.

Perhaps might need to change phone radio to 4g/3g if not in 5g area. And then manually switch back when you are... That might help with battery life.

ED E

biebiebie wrote: »

Perhaps might need to change phone radio to 4g/3g if not in 5g area. And then manually switch back when you are... That might help with battery life.

Shouldnt really be required. Your phone currently can operate in 2G, 3G and 4G modes but that isnt a huge battery burn. The baseband talks and listens in the active channel but only listens for other potentials. This is done in hardware so isnt power intensive.


The problem can be all new radio chipsets won't be as refined as later generations on the same RAT so early 5G will be inefficient just like early 4G and 3G.



When people are testing the system they're actually transferring large amounts of data, all that data is handed off to the CPU which may in fact be the source of lots of energy expenditure. Your speedtest app is high level software that doesn't get the benefits of ASICs.

biebiebie

What if you're in a fringe area, dropping in and out of 5g?
That's the type of scenario that might be more common in the early days of 5g as the service is being rolled out

ED E

If driving say, perhaps.

The phone has rules like:
If 3G 70%+ and 4G 50%+ use 4G
If 4G below 40% and 3G at least 4G-10% then use 3G

Its not as simple as that but you get the idea. So if you're sat on a bench at the edge of a 5G cell you will just delatch and stay that way. Itll mostly be busy listening for other 4G neighbour cells which are likely to become rapidly available.

wotzgoingon

gmisk wrote: »

I am with 3 at the minute the only way I think I would get 4g (never mind 5g) was if I was sitting on one of their masts!

Ironically posted twice - because of crappy 3 signal....

I live in the sticks and get 3, 4G and live over a mile away from the mast as the crow flies. Mind you it is not great 4G speeds but can be at times. Last night at around 3am I downloaded over 20GB's at 3MB/s so roughly a 24Mb connection.

Testament1

wotzgoingon wrote: »

I live in the sticks and get 3, 4G and live over a mile away from the mast as the crow flies. Mind you it is not great 4G speeds but can be at times. Last night at around 3am I downloaded over 20GB's at 3MB/s so roughly a 24Mb connection.

Which is great if you're a regular 3am user. The rest of us on the Three network share the daily frustration of the data network violently shítting the bed come evening time and folks being home from work and trying to use the network. Seriously, you can nearly set your watch to when the network will fall off a cliff.

So yeah if you're a Three customer then no it's not worth getting a 5G phone because 3 and 4G is already incredibly volatile with them so why would the next step up be any better? Hell they can't even get calls to connect half the time nevermind internet!

riclad

5g use,s different bandwidth to 4g.
It will require at least twice as much cell towers to be installed ,
to provide a faster signal ,download speed to 4g.
i See offers now of 30gig per month on 4 g networks .
If the networks have to spell billions setting up 5g networks
they will have to charge the customer more than they are charging now .
I Do not see we will see unlimited downloads on 5g services, .
I see no big deal about 5g if you are only allowed to download 30 gig per month.even if its 2-3 times faster than 4 g download speeds .
i don,t know the details about irish networks, In the usa the companys
have to buy spectrum for 5g before they even start building the network.
Some companys bought spectrum and did not use it in all area.s
i cannot imagine a situation where i need more than 100 mbs on my
phone as i can only download 30 gig per month anyway .
i prefer to use my pc or my laptop if i am browsing the web.


https://www.lifewire.com/5g-vs-4g-4156322

Clareman

You'll have to go for an uncapped package if you are going for 5G, stuff like Netflix or Youtube will go straight to ultimate HD when they see the bandwidth available and will be able to download huge amounts in a short period of time.

Irish Gunner

So has the 5g phone buying option changed?

Have the readies and not sure if to hold out for 2020 to see any new handsets 5g ready.

Was looking at the one plus 7t Pro but no model's are 5g ready except those sold by ee network in the UK

Bluefoam

Irish Gunner wrote: »

So has the 5g phone buying option changed?

Have the readies and not sure if to hold out for 2020 to see any new handsets 5g ready.

Was looking at the one plus 7t Pro but no model's are 5g ready except those sold by ee network in the UK

Nokia 8.2 will be launched at MWC... Will be a good balance between cost and quality...

ED E

Irish Gunner wrote: »

So has the 5g phone buying option changed?

Have the readies and not sure if to hold out for 2020 to see any new handsets 5g ready.

Was looking at the one plus 7t Pro but no model's are 5g ready except those sold by ee network in the UK

I really wouldnt bother until Q2 2020.