Wouldn't this make more sense if it were 4Ge isntead of 5Ge?
Of course it would. But if they wanted to be honest, they would advertise these capabilities as "LTE Advanced" or "LTE-A", since that is what the wireless industry actually calls them.
Yup, it is super surprising that Apple intentionally added this as a listed update in the 12.2 documentation. It really goes against the grain of their publicly outward facing customer advocacy stance.
It certainly seems that way. And this isn't the first time. As others have pointed out, AT&T also markets HSPA+ (a faster version of the 3G/UMTS protocol) as 4G, and iPhones report it as such (reporting real 4G as "LTE")
I suspect there is some hardball going on between the companies. AT&T was the first US carrier to sell iPhones, so there may be some language in their contract that obligates Apple to go along with this nonsense. AT&T may also be hinting things like "if you don't, we won't promote your new iPhones in our advertisements".
I see 5Ge and the speeds are the same if not less than LTE
That's because "5GE"
is the same LTE network you had before the iOS update. You've got the same phone, with the same chips and the same network. If your phone was capable of LTE-A features before the upgrade, then it is still using them today. The only difference is, literally, the icon displayed on the screen.
Isn’t there like a standards body for this crap? It’s not like companies can just say their router uses WiFi 12 or their phone uses BlueTooth 9.1. AT&T is so dirty and misleading. I dropped them not long after when I got my iPhone 5 in 2012.
There is a standards body, but interestingly enough, I don't think
3GPP has trademarks for terms like "4G" and "5G" (although there is an official 5G logo, which I assume is a trademark).
3GPP standards come in the form of
releases, each of which is a large bundle of standards documents. Within each release, some features are mandatory and some are optional. Within the industry (if you look at equipment sold to network operators and makers of wireless chips), they all talk about which releases their products conform to. For example, LTE is release 8 (with some enhancements in release 9). LTE-Advanced (what AT&T is calling "5GE") is release 10. The 5G "New Radio" specification starts in release 15, with "phase 2" specifications in the (not yet finished) release 16.
This all having been said, it's also important to note that even within standards bodies, "4G" has referred to all successors to 3G. In addition to LTE (which we're all using today), it also include Wi-Max (which Sprint used as their 4G solution for a year or two) and TD-LTE (which has only been used in China). Even today, there are three different "4G" technologies, in addition to six predecessor and proposed-but-abandoned technologies. (Source:
Wikipedia)
Fortunately, it appears that "5G" standards are not going through the mess that 4G did, so that term should be a lot clearer, despite AT&T's marketing department trying to muddy the waters.
Doesn't real 5G require millimeter waves that only go very short distances (and not through walls well, etc.)? I was under the impression it will be years before any of that is even deployed in tiny spot areas of certain cities. I think there would have to be a 5G unit across the street on the telephone pole for that to work.
Not quite. While millimeter wave is a key component of 5G, there are quite a lot of 5G technologies that also work at "sub 6" (that is less than 6 GHz) frequencies. This is actually of critical importance because, as you said, millimeter wave doesn't travel long distances, nor does it penetrate buildings very well, so any mobile 5G deployment is going to include both millimeter wave and sub-6 radio towers. 5G phones will almost certainly have at least two radio receivers, so they can connect to both at the same time - using sub-6 for "control plane" traffic (for maintaining connections) and to provide greater range, while using millimeter wave (which will hand-off to different cells far more rapidly and occasionally drop out altogether) for high-bandwidth data transfer.
There are deployments today, but not globally. Technology developers completed their field trials last year. Operators have small deployments right now and will be greatly expanding them in the next 2-3 years.
And yes, the millimeter wave part of the network is going to require a lot of antennas (and fiber or wireless connectivity to connect all of them up to the network) in order to provide good coverage. If you follow wireless industry news, you will see manufacturers negotiating with cities to place nodes behind public sign boards, in city furniture, underneath manhole covers, and anywhere else they can. Much like how, 30 years ago, the phone companies had pay phones on every block.
Of course, we'll probably know when the deployment is wide-spread, as the cancer rates will rise in correlation.
Millimeter wave does not penetrate the human body, so cancer risk is likely to be lower than sub-6 frequencies, which do.
BTW, that's why millimeter wave is one of the popular technologies for airport scanners - it scans the surface of your body instead of the inside (like an X-ray scanner would), which is what you want if you're looking for objects hidden in clothing.