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Carrier 5G in mid 2022, what's your take now?

So we are in mid 2022 now. What's your take on 5G?

  • I'm on it. I need the latest tech

    Votes: 27 37.0%

  • I would use it, but because I have to (eg 4G congestion)

    Votes: 2 2.7%

  • I don't need it/I turn it off. 4G still works fine for me

    Votes: 36 49.3%

  • 5G? I barely even get 4G.

    Votes: 8 11.0%
  • Total voters
    73
I

ian87w

macrumors G3
Original poster
Feb 22, 2020
8,704
12,639
Indonesia
So we are in mid 2022 now. What's your take on 5G?

For me personally, I would want my next phone to have 5G. But not because of FOMO or hype. The government and carriers in my country are in the process of turning off 3G. Now you would think 4G is fine, but it's not. 4G coverage is still not as wide as 3G, and the towers in the capital city is highly congested. Often times, I get better connectivity by switching to 3G just because 4G is way over-congested. I mean we are in the world of $100 4G phones, so almost everyone is connected to the highly congested 4G towers. One of the carriers already turned off its 3G. It didn't make its 4G to be better, it's the same, but now there's no 3G to fallback to.

Certain spots in my city start to have 5G, and I believe it will only be better. If I don't have a 5G phone, when 3G is off, there's no way to fallback on when 4G is congested. And no, 2G is not the answer as the carriers are focusing 2G for voice only, so GPRS and EDGE are unusable.

How about you guys? What's your take on 5G in your area?
 
There’s barely any 5G in my area and when I do connect to it, I don’t find it noticeably faster than 4G. The 4G coverage where I live is great so I m connected to that 90% of the time. In rural areas I drop to 3G but you have to be out in the sticks for that to happen.
 
It's much better here than it was. I would turn it off a lot in the beginning but have kept it on the last few months with no issues. I just wish they would expand Verizon UW more. I see it most of the time at work but never at home which is only like six miles away. And it only shows up outside at work.
 
You’re missing “I have a 5G device, 5G is set to auto, and I’ve never noticed nor do I give a rat’s behind.”

Seriously, mine is a personal digital assistant / music player / news feeder / communications device. I’m not using it to transfer terabytes of data. If I wish to listen to a podcast I haven’t downloaded, when I click play, it plays. Really, what’s the point ?

What is with users using the term “My city” or “My country” ? I’ve noticed quite a few users do that. As someone who has traveled most of the world, I can relate to most people. I’ve been to Indonesia several times and I have enjoyed it. If you live in Jakarta there is around 35 million people. It’s not like it would be easy to track you down. For what it’s worth, I live in Houston.
 
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5G in my city has been great. I recently traveled to Orlando, Florida by vehicle and it took 13.5 hours. I had 0 issues traveling and 0 issues while staying there for a week. At home, my device is on 5G 98% of the time. If there isn’t a 5G signal, it immediately jumps to LTE. I haven’t noticed much of a difference as I don’t pay attention to what it currently is on. I will say that I’ve only seen 5G UW on Verizon, when I’m near stadiums in Baltimore and when I was in Philadelphia. I wish it was available more where I’m at.
 
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I'm pretty sure there's 5G in my market, but I have a 4G only iPhone. I learned the last time when I was with Sprint to let the carrier work out all the kinks before jumping aboard.

iPhone 5 in 2012, first LTE phone, it didn't get LTE signal until mid-2014 and even then it was spotty and subpar. When I went to get a new iPhone in Feb. 2021 I chose the iPhone 11 Pro Max in part because it did NOT have 5G.

I'm not interested in being a network guinea pig again. I was for Sprint, I am not for T-Mobile. LTE has been just fine in my market. When I upgrade phones in 2 or 3 years 5G will probably be solid everywhere - and I won't have to think about it.
 
eyoungren said:
I'm pretty sure there's 5G in my market, but I have a 4G only iPhone. I learned the last time when I was with Sprint to let the carrier work out all the kinks before jumping aboard.

iPhone 5 in 2012, first LTE phone, it didn't get LTE signal until mid-2014 and even then it was spotty and subpar. When I went to get a new iPhone in Feb. 2021 I chose the iPhone 11 Pro Max in part because it did NOT have 5G.

I'm not interested in being a network guinea pig again. I was for Sprint, I am not for T-Mobile. LTE has been just fine in my market. When I upgrade phones in 2 or 3 years 5G will probably be solid everywhere - and I won't have to think about it.
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If 4G is doing fine for you, coverage and speed wise, then I don't see why you should spend more for 5G.
 
There's good 5G coverage in my country, so I'm on it almost all the time. I see zero benefits of it though.
 
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ian87w said:
If 4G is doing fine for you, coverage and speed wise, then I don't see why you should spend more for 5G.
Click to expand...
Well, I don't have to spend more. Edge, HSPA+ LTE. or 5G my carrier sees it all as data. I'm just not interested in owning another phone that can't use what it was designed for. I'll wait until the network is mature.

But yeah, the difference between getting the 12PM in the capacity we wanted would have added an additional $100 to the monthly bill. This way, I can just enjoy the speeds I get on LTE knowing I am paying less per month.
 
Ram65 said:
5G+ has been stellar on Att so far they building this network out right and fast too 😁
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I believe in the end, 5G is inevitable. It's just the natural progression of cellular tech.
I'm simply curious at what people think about it now. I remember a few years back, there were more people pushing back on 5G. Probably a matter of time in coverage.
 
ian87w said:
I believe in the end, 5G is inevitable. It's just the natural progression of cellular tech.
I'm simply curious at what people think about it now. I remember a few years back, there were more people pushing back on 5G. Probably a matter of time in coverage.
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Of course it is inevitable.

Here in the UK 5G coverage is patchy and limited to major cities and towns…

4G is pretty much available and for my uses fast enough.
Though some areas (granted, rather remote, like Dartmoor or wilds of Scotland and Wales) barely have 2G. 🙂
 
in Jakarta,Indonesia 5G is only available at certain spots...and even with 5G the speed is good 100mbps-/+ but it doesnt feel fast. No difference if i compare it to 4G.
 
I'm on T-mobile and their 5G coverage is very wide, at least in Washington and Oregon. However, their actual speed ranges from 500mbps in urban areas to 1mbps in rural areas. Even in some cities of 15,000 their top speed is only 10-20mbps. I'd complain about it, but it's comparable with the Verizon and AT&T speeds in the same location. It's just not "Wow! Look how fast 5G is!" in those locations. More like the same speed as LTE because they only upgraded the radios and not the backhaul from the cell towers to the internet.
 
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Feyl said:
There's good 5G coverage in my country, so I'm on it almost all the time. I see zero benefits of it though.
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I have my cellular settings on "5G auto," I can get AT&T 5G+ (whatever that means) and while the extra speed of 5G is nice, I honestly don't find it life-changing. I still find plenty of spots where I have "5GE" (which I think is LTE) and my service is terrible.
 
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This is kind of a weird way to measure, but my husband and I recently started playing pokemon go again and 5G has been awful for it. Speed tests show much faster data speeds, but the game lags and locks up all the time on both his 13 pro and my SE3. Seems there's still lots of congestion on 5G in our area but what's really weird is when I change it to LTE-only, it's only marginally better. When I switch over to my old 8+ though, the game runs perfectly with no lag. I also get streaming lag on the newer phones on both 5G and LTE but not on the 8+. There's one spot in town where the newer phones lose data on 5G and LTE, but the 8+ does just fine. The older radio seems to get a much better LTE signal so I've just been using my 5yo phone again until the network catches up lol.
 
Depends on whose 5g.

I’m on T-Mobile in a large Rocky Mountain city and 5g here is amazing. Great coverage and speed for the most part even during high use times.

T-Mobile has come a long way note that the sprint / Nextel spectrum is being used.

At&t is trash here.

Verizon is getting pretty congested. Their mmwave isn’t nearly as useful.
 
Motionblurrr said:
It's great because it has decongested LTE users like me, so we get actual advertised speeds rivaling 5G itself now lmao
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In the end, imo that’s the necessity of 5G. It’s not about speed per se, but capacity.
LTE is already ultra congested where I am, that sometimes I get better connectivity when going to 3G. But the government and carriers are shutting down 3G. That will make 4G even more congested. I hope 5G is rolling out swiftly.
 
Not interested in 5G. I turn it off and could happily ignore it if it were not for the thousands of abominated battleship gray towers being erected on every other street corner, turning once pleasantly kept urban and even rural areas into a scene from Blade Runner. In my opinion it’s a scourge.
 
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I wish it was more prevalent. I'm not entirely convinced where I live that 5G as indicated on my phone is actually 5G (in fact, for the few days I used the Netmonster app on a Pixel 6 I bought, 5G in fact showed up as only 4G).
 
5G is not available where I live so I only see the benefit when I visit major cities and I try my best not to do that too often. It’s a feature I could have lived without these last couple of years in all honesty. It doesn’t cost anymore to have it in my country though but they can’t really charge you more as the coverage is so sparse.
 
What I’ve always wondered is, just how much speed can our device actually process anyway?

I think that’s the real question.
 
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