5G, how's your experience so far?

[ian87w]

5G is a controversial topic. Many eople think it's a cash grab attempt, many doubted its usefulness, while others are clamoring for the promised fast wireless service.

My country, Indonesia, is starting to deploy 5G (sub6) in few spots (very few specific spots) as trials, at least for the number one carrier. I happened to be around that area a few times a month, and my S21 has been catching that 5G signal.

Speedwise, I've been getting up to around 100mbps down. But most importantly is not the speed, but the much reduced latency. Browsing sites felt more instant, in a sense that there are less time waiting between a tap and the page loading.

For my perspective, 5G is a necessity. All that was promised with 4G is currently underwhelming as 4G is getting ultra congested. Carriers in my country are starting to switch off 3G, and as such, data connectivity got dumped into the overcrowded 4G. Hopefully the transition to 5G is quick.

What's your experience with 5G so far?

 

[skyhawkmatthew]

You’ve hit upon the only use case I have for 5G. I leave it turned off most of the time (12 mini so anything to help the battery!), and only enable it if the LTE network seems too congested and I need a better data rate.

 

[Juicy Box]

What's your experience with 5G so far?

About a month ago, I switched from the SE1 to the 13 Mini, not a long time using it so far.

It seems like the majority of places I use my phone, there is no 5G, and LTE works fine.

The few places I go with 5G, the service seems to work just as well as the LTE.

If my new iPhone didn't include 5G, it wouldn't have bother me at all.

I leave it turned off most of the time

I might do that, although, I haven't had any battery issues with the new iPhone. Actually, I hardly ever charge it. Pretty much only charge it when I have it in my car with CarPlay.

I have read somewhere that the 13 Mini improved on battery life over the 12 Mini.

 

[eyoungren]

I'm in the US (Phoenix). My carrier is T-Mobile, and if you believe their marketing they have 'the best 5G network'.

Well, I don't use it. I bought an 11 Pro Max in February 2021. It was cheaper than the 12PM and it didn't have 5G which was a selling point for me. I was a Sprint customer during Sprint's transition from 3G to LTE. It was a horrible transition and my market was never one of Sprint's best to begin with. It eventually got bad enough for us to leave to T-Mobile.

Phoenix is a good T-Mobile market and the difference was night and day with LTE. But, with all the complaints and the newness of 5G I am just not interested in being another protocol/speed guinea pig for my carrier.

By the time we get around to upgrading phones again, 5G will be a mature network just like LTE is today and I shouldn't have to deal with any growth problems. I average around 80 to 100 down on my LTE phone and when I visited my sister where she lives I was getting around 200 down. I've got zero problems with those speeds. I can do anything I wish using those speeds.

EDIT: This is my speed on LTE at home. I know 5G is faster but there isn't much I can't do with this.



Two things about this though. 1 - I have a T-Mobile Cellspot, a 4G/LTE femtocell which uses my home internet connection for backhaul to T-Mob's network. 2 - I have Gigabit internet from my ISP.

 

[jav6454]

It's nice, but too much of a battery drain when in mmW areas I know there is mmW. So I keep it off and stick to LTE; rather 5GE [chuckles internally]. In my area I keep to sub5GHz 5G.

 

[NoGood@Usernames]

Verizon has a surprising amount of the more populous portions of my area covered with mid-band 5G and a smaller portion with low band 5G (DSS). The mid-band coverage provides a big jump in speeds over LTE, giving 300-500 Mbps. The low band 5G is more of a mixed bag but is generally comparable in speeds to LTE; sometimes it’s a bit faster, sometimes slightly slower but overall works well.

5G is more spectrum efficient on the air interface and once carriers start rolling out standalone 5G network cores even more efficiency will be realized that will help prevent and ease congestion compared to LTE.

 

[Barbareren]

I recently got 5G where I live. The battery life has really gone to sh..t, and I have a 12 mini - which is already infamous for its battery life lol, so I simply had to switch to 4G (LTE)… The downloading speed on 5G is nice and all, but 4G works just fine for me.

 

[Herdfan]

I have hit some 5G networks traveling and it seems fine so far on a 12P.

That is with Verizon. So far they haven't lit up my market, but if they do like the did with LTE, they will put up one tower in Charleston just so they can say they are in the market.

 

[JT2002TJ]

I love it in NYC area on T-Mobile with 13PM.