Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
When Verizon phones cannot use data and voice at the same time I do not understand why you would think they are so great. I mean what, they are like more than 10 years behind GSM on this stuff.
That's old information. Since 2014, that's been possible on Verizon.
 
*sigh* Are the carriers doing that again? (calling an incremental upgrade the next generation of cellular technology when it isn't?) :(
AT&T will be rolling out LTE Advanced....which is very awesome. Gigabit speeds. Low latency. It's pretty sweet when you have that connection. But it's still 4G.

But real 5G is going to be a few years out.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/video/telecom/wireless/everything-you-need-to-know-about-5g

And, here's hoping THIS time the carriers actually do the responsible thing and have the native voice component (and roaming) figured out before they (greedily) deploy the data networks???

5G is promising 20Gb/s speeds and less than 1ms of latency. Provided they can actually deliver enough sessions on their base stations, that could be the end of wired broadband for a lot of people (obviously, the monthly usage caps need massive adjustment when you can download a movie in a few seconds) :)

Every carrier is calling this next step 5G. AT&T is testing it now. Verizon is getting into it later in 2018. Sprint has said by 2020. T-Mobile will be years behind as always.

People don't understand calling it LTE Advanced. They know there was 2G, then 3G, now 4G. The next step they understand is 5G.

I know it's not technically 5G but for 99% of the market, that's that it is and what they understand.
 
  • Like
Reactions: redfirebird08
Still trying to figure out why I would need gigabit speeds on a cell phone. Laptop, tablet, sure. How about a 5G modem/router for home networks? No wires, no fiber, no coax, no dish, just a small antenna.
 
5G sounds great, and people jump at higher speeds like candy. The thing is what about indoor penetration? 5G is quoted at the moment as having as being terminally poor for that for that. So all well and good getting huge speed increases but not so great if it cant penetrate your home, lower frequencies travel father and penetrate better. Here in the UK EE (bought by BT) has the most bandwidth and has 800Mhz, 2100Mhz, 2600Mhz and 1800Mhz and still there are black spots and it drops down to 3G in places marked as 4G (LTE) because of buildings, topography and planning rights for masts that limited placement and height etc.

Getting good 4G coverage in rural areas and dense cities blocks would be better and EE I believe are rolling that out Using 800Mhz for instance in rural areas. Other networks at the 4G auction didn't buy much bandwidth and some like O2 in the UK still have not got Volte running across the whole country and its coming to the end of 2017.

I would rather solid 4G coverage rather than going into stores, coffee shops or peoples houses and work etc and getting 'no service' on the UK's biggest cellular provide. Thinking ahead to to 5G which in the UK is going to be at least 2020 to be rolled out after the 5G aution. Maybe by then we wont have so many dead zones, or why not let sim cards/phones roam as needed across all networks when you have no signal. How hard can that be in your own country when operators can do it when you go on holiday.

Here, have a free solution. Set minimum thresholds for coverage, speed, bandwidth, and dropped connections for a percent of the area (not population) and increase that, requirement each quarter. Failure to meet the requirement once and you forfit your license, and any equipment using it, and it can be auctioned off again. That carrier, and any executive of it, can not bid on spectrum for a set period of time (say, two years).
 
Agreed. Thought exactly the same.
However, such all-wireless 5G future will require an increase of tower densities, probably using micro-cells.

The demise of cable duopolies cannot come soon enough.

I think one of the promises of 5G is that they won't have to add a ton of new towers.

Adding towers is so expensive and more problematic, it takes a LONG time in many areas. To get a new tower approved in rural Texas can take as little as 2 months. In San Francisco? Over 2 years for approval. It's clear that adding more towers isn't the key.

In Minneapolis, they're also upgrading the Distributed Antenna System (DAS) at US Bank Stadium. It'll be a 150% increase in capacity compared to last Super Bowl thanks to over 800 antennas.
 
Every carrier is calling this next step 5G. AT&T is testing it now. Verizon is getting into it later in 2018. Sprint has said by 2020. T-Mobile will be years behind as always.

People don't understand calling it LTE Advanced. They know there was 2G, then 3G, now 4G. The next step they understand is 5G.

I know it's not technically 5G but for 99% of the market, that's that it is and what they understand.
ARGH!!! They did this **** when they rolled out HSPA and were calling it 4G. They keep muddying the waters with this crap. Call it 4G+ - at least that's close to the truth.

Heh....so they'll have to call the 5G networks that they start implementing in 2020 "6G" in their marketing speak. *sigh*

Considering Verizon and Sprint aren't shutting down their CDMA networks for another couple of years, I wouldn't be all that optimistic about when they'll get on the bandwagon.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DCIFRTHS
Qualcomm will eventually get left in the dust as their highest paying, highest profile customers leave and find other solutions. They’re forgetting that Apple doesn’t need them, they need Apple.
 
ROFL.
Seriously? What about all the delays to products in their X86 roadmap we are so fond of complaining about (eg 16Gb Ram Max on MacBooks).
Do you know anything about Intel other than the isolated incident you mentioned? Seriously. Wondering if I'm talking to someone well informed, or just trolling.

I'll say it again, Intel has an INSANELY good manufacturing process, maybe the best in America. I would have full confidence in Intel making every chip for Apple.
 
once 5g becomes the norm, unlimited data for everyone has to become the norm too (at least for those who use data responsibly)

"oh no i just used up my 10gb data plan in 3 minutes"
 
10-100X faster than a 4G connection?

The problem isn't speed, it's data caps. If Apple and Intel can devise an SoC that can suck down unlimited data at 4G speeds then I'll glady pay a premium for it.
[doublepost=1510934367][/doublepost]
once 5g becomes the norm, unlimited data for everyone has to become the norm too (at least for those who use data responsibly)


This isn't alcohol or drugs we're talking about. If unlimited data can only be used "responsibly" then it's called "limited data."
 
Don't even bother with CDMA. Stick with Intel, Apple. GSM all the way. Just my 2 cents.

I think you and some others are really confused about networks, and about Qualcomm.

- 4G LTE and beyond are tied to neither GSM nor CDMA2000.

- Qualcomm was not only about CDMA (a radio type which GSM used for 3G, btw), but is also a primary inventor and patent holder for 4G and beyond.

Good to see Apple giving business to a company known for its ENGINEERING, not a company that's basically a giant legal department.

Qualcomm spends billions creating thousands of patented mobile & cellular inventions each year. You are using their engineering whenever you use 3G, 4G, and soon 5G.

An Intel modem, and the iPhone which uses it, both rely on a lot of engineering by Qualcomm and other companies.

It doesn't matter whose modem is in a phone. Qualcomm (and many other standards contributors) all must be paid a royalty. Here are some of the LTE patent holders, for example:

lte_patents.png


Apple has sued Noka, Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung, and now Qualcomm, all in attempts to force lower rates. It's all about wanting to make even more profits.

I’d seen some people on this forum making remarks about 5G being a health hazard. Do you know anything about that? Or is that the generalized fear of cellular that’s been around for awhile?

It's based on the same unwarranted fear of the word "radiation".

When radio engineers talk about "radiation", they mean electromagnetic waves "radiating from" an antenna, much like ripples in a pond or how we say that a person "radiates" joy.

The problem is, naive people visit scare sites that deliberately try to associate "radio wave radiation" with truly dangerous "nuclear ionizing radiation".
 
Last edited:
Good to see Apple giving business to a company known for its ENGINEERING, not a company that's basically a giant legal department.
You mean to Apple themselves??
[doublepost=1510935548][/doublepost]
What’s going to happen to TSMC and the billions they have invested?!
May be TSMC will file for bankruptcy.. welcome to the world of Apple's supply chain.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Delgibbons
Why doesn’t Apple put in the research to build a cellular chip in-house? Same with displays. They pay out billions of dollars to competitors (Qualcomm and Samsung) for very expensive components.

They already make the A11, M11, Secure Enclave, Face ID, and all of iOS, which are are an order of magnitude more complex than a modem.

I completely agree with you. Intel's design is inferior to Qualcomm's. I have the feeling this is Intel basically begging Apple to bring in their massive resources to help them build a better chip to compete with Qualcomm. I feel like Apple could do just fine on their own even starting from scratch.
 
I completely agree with you. Intel's design is inferior to Qualcomm's. I have the feeling this is Intel basically begging Apple to bring in their massive resources to help them build a better chip to compete with Qualcomm. I feel like Apple could do just fine on their own even starting from scratch.

That would be extremely difficult. Even Intel didn't start from scratch.

Instead, Intel bought the rights to the CDMA assets of Via Telecom, a fabless designer who had taken licensed reference chip designs from Qualcomm and enhanced them to run on a DSP core designed by an Israeli company called CEVA.

Intel also bought Infineon, whose GSM modem also used CEVA DSP cores.

So it all worked out very nicely. Intel basically acquired enough compatible IP to create a full stack broadband processor chip.

That's how Intel was able to bring out a modem so quickly in the first place.
 
Still trying to figure out why I would need gigabit speeds on a cell phone. Laptop, tablet, sure.
One thing non-techies tend to forget is that Wi-Fi/4G/5G (etc) bandwidth speeds are shared.

The maximum capacity quoted here is C, and the number of users is N. The maximum speed your phone can download at is therefore get is C/N.

If you get a smartphone with 1gbps speeds, and there are 20 users - you get 1000/20 = 50mbps.
If you get a smartphone with 300mbps speeds, and there are 20 users - you get 300/20 = 15mbps.

In addition, that speed is the total of your upload and download - so in the latter example with 15mbps speed, you can download at 15 and upload at 0, or download at 10 and upload at 5, or download at 0 and upload at 15.

As such, improving your phones speed does improve the speed it will get in real-world. You won't ever see 1000mbps downloads, but you can see a similar rate of improvement because your phone is more efficient with its allocated resources. And by being more efficient, it requires less of the networks resources and capacity, meaning more resources and capacity are available to other users which may need it.
 
Last edited:
When Verizon phones cannot use data and voice at the same time I do not understand why you would think they are so great. I mean what, they are like more than 10 years behind GSM on this stuff.

You are misinformed. Since LTE, they've been able to use voice and data at the same time. i.e. they've been doing it for years. They also support wifi calling, and HD voice, etc.
 
The iPhone may not be the end result of this long process, but I think Apple is doing something extremely smart and will take them miles farther in the game. If Apple can built everything on a single SoC they will set themselves up for a great future. The one thing every other company isn’t able to replicate if Apples SoC. That’s their bread and butter, and the more they can build one chip with everything on it the more companies will not be able to keep up.
 
Downloading a Youtube video 100 times faster means your phone spends 1/100th the time with its modem and associated amplifiers, etc powered on, saving you significant battery life. It also frees up the cellular channel 100 times faster, meaning you're less likely to be queued or speed-constrained in the first place.

Lol, you don’t “download” YouTube videos... you STREAM them.
The initial negotiation figures out what bitrate to stream it at... then it’s pushed to you at that rate the entire time.

If you don’t believe me... try starting to watch a long YouTube video on a WiFi iPad for example, connected to your home network- now jump in your car & drive away. Yeah... after like a 15 second buffer, the video drops.

I’m not against progress by any means, but I’m firmly in the camp of those that believe- ubiquitous coverage of 4g is far more important than pushing an even faster standard. There are no mobile applications that begin to approach the necessity for even an 80% of 4g theoretical peak bandwidth.
[doublepost=1510944857][/doublepost]
Some think this just means getting to watch a YouTube video quicker but that's a really uninformed understanding. It's about much much more than just getting you your content quicker (though that is a small part of it).

With the move to 5G, it'll become a real option to switch from having a cable modem with Comcast or other provider at home and just go totally wireless. Current 4G LTE isn't quite up to the speeds cable modems can offer but with 5G, we get much closer and it becomes a real option.

Who are these carriers in your pipe dream that will allow unlimited (think: terabytes) of 5g access per month, as home internet, at a fixed and reasonable rate... such as you get from Comcast or other providers?
(Nice passive/aggressive dig, btw! Too bad you couldn’t back it up by making a point... you know explaining how 5g is “much much” more than higher speeds, and all the myraid other things it brings; since... as you say, the higher speed is only “a small part of it”.)
 
Last edited:
Who are these carriers in your pipe dream that will allow unlimited (think: terabytes) of 5g access per month, as home internet, at a fixed and reasonable rate... such as you get from Comcast or other providers?
(Nice passive/aggressive dig, btw! Too bad you couldn’t back it up by making a point... you know explaining how 5g is “much much” more than higher speeds, and all the myraid other things it brings; since... as you say, the higher speed is only “a small part of it”.)

Here are some facts:

  • Comcast use to have a 300GB/month limit. Now that limit is 1TB.
  • Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, & T-Mobile have all increased their limits over time.
  • As speeds have increased and consumption too, all providers have increased their limits too in response.
It's absolutely foolish to believe that carriers will build new networks with vastly increased speeds, as consumers consume more data, and not also increase their caps as they have done for the past 10 years. When the iPhone debuted in 2007, the data cap was around 200MB/month.


5G offers speeds up to 30 Gbit/s per radio cell. 4G today delivers a maximum of 100 to 1000 Mbit/s. But speed is only part of the benefit, as I said previously.

Compared to today's LTE networks, 5G should facilitate a data transfer rate which lies between 10 to 30 times more per radio cell, with roughly 1000 times the capacity. This will make it possible to address up to 100 thousand million mobile networked devices at the same time worldwide, including "things" in the Internet of Things. Energy efficiency is also set to rise significantly: Energy consumption per transferred bit on the end devices themselves will drop to a thousandth of its previous level. This facilitates up to 10 years of autonomy in terms of power.

5G networks use additional technical elements to reliably provide 5G mobile network services when large numbers of mobile users need coverage. The most important element here is 'Massive MIMO' (Multiple Input, Multiple Output). They can use beam forming to work around things like large buildings and communicate directly with specific devices thanks to the setup of their towers.

On average, private mobile users 'consume' around 3 gigabytes a month. When you bring Millennials into the picture, the demand rises to a whopping 35 GB/month, which is expected to double every 12 to 18 months. 4G doesn't have the ability to supply those kinds of requirements.

So yes, as I said previously, 5G is about more than simply speed. It's about supporting the needs of the future as the number of connected devices and quantity of content consumed continues to increase.
 
Oh thank god its 10 to 100 times faster!
I’m SO over waiting 3/4 of a second for a YouTube video to buffer & start on 4g.

/sarcasm
I'm more interested in the latency reductions. Right now, 4G is "fast enough" to be useful for the majority of applications that are constrained by bandwidth (Netflix, for example)- but 4G has too much latency for other applications (like twitch-based online gaming such as an FPS or fighting game).

More bandwidth is nice, but doesn't open anything new up.

But lower latency can open up new classes of mobile applications. Particularly gaming. I could see a system like the Nintendo Switch coming with a 5G chip built in and being just as good as WiFi, while 4G would be inferior to WiFi.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.