Qualcomm Announces First Fully-Integrated 5G Millimeter Wave Antenna Module

[jdiamond]

so going to google.com will all of the sudden take more data? ive never understood this comment. you won't use data faster. your pages will simply load faster.

att just rolled out 5g here, so im ready

The largest and most important example is streaming video. Most services of streaming video auto adjust the quality to match you download ability, up to at least 60 megabits/second. That's why one of the phone companies recently went out of their way to artificially constrain video quality. I don't know about you guys, but for me, video is the ONLY significant consumer of LTE. Even Google Maps only uses about a gigabyte/month for me, yet I can use up a gigabyte in only 20 minutes of Netflix or an hour of Facetime.

If you DON'T ever look at video iver LTE (or have people text you video), I'd be amazed if you use more than 2GB/month. (Unless you download a lot of large apps, etc.)
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The largest and most important example is streaming video. Most services of streaming video auto adjust the quality to match you download ability, up to at least 60 megabits/second. That's why one of the phone companies recently went out of their way to artificially constrain video quality. I don't know about you guys, but for me, video is the ONLY significant consumer of LTE. Even Google Maps only uses about a gigabyte/month for me, yet I can use up a gigabyte in only 20 minutes of Netflix or an hour of Facetime.

If you DON'T ever look at video iver LTE (or have people text you video), I'd be amazed if you use more than 2GB/month. (Unless you download a lot of large apps, etc.)

The one other reason you always hear this comment is about leveraging data bandwidth. You say you'll just keep your habits the same. Really? Then why do you care about increased throughput? Imagine you could get 1 GB/second to your phone. Why would you want that? Yes, web pages would load marginally faster, but what's the latency now? A few seconds max? When everyone talks about getting a gigabyte/second to the phone, the implication is that you'll use it - use it for all kinds of things. Richer webpages will become commonplace. Online games and live connections will become the norm. And that's where the LTE pricing issue comes in. We use Terabytes/month over cable internet - what would phone companies charge for that?

 

[I7guy]

In my opinion, the power of 5G does not lie with mobile networks.
It lies with fixed 5G to displace traditional cable providers from their hold on home networks.

An aggressive deployment of fixed 5G will provide relief to those, like me, that are tied to a city's cable duopoly.

Maybe not this decade -- but definitely by next one.
For now, I couldn't care less about 5G on my iPhone. And my iPad is only WiFi-capable anyway -- and so are our Macs and Rokus (obviously).

So, that is that.

Nothing will be displaced unless your cell phone provider plans allow for unlimited streaming without throttling and massive changes in the way content providers and content distributors manage one another.

 

[gavroche]

so going to google.com will all of the sudden take more data? ive never understood this comment. you won't use data faster. your pages will simply load faster.

att just rolled out 5g here, so im ready

If the video content you try watching suddenly loads faster... so you finish with it sooner... do you then stop and not do anything to wait until that moment that you would have finished watching, before doing other stuff?

 

[Pupi]

If the video content you try watching suddenly loads faster... so you finish with it sooner... do you then stop and not do anything to wait until that moment that you would have finished watching, before doing other stuff?

A video on 4G takes honestly 1 second to load, if that. With 4G we’re not on the “loading” phase of the internet anymore for most use-cases, unlike in the past when simple tech bumps would earn us a lot of extra time. Everything nowadays is instant, for the most part. You now gain seconds at best with tech improvements and the development of faster speeds will rather just enable us to do whole new things with the internet, as well as raise the fallback baseline in sub-optimal conditions.

 

[apolloa]

Literally something I could not care less about, 4G is fast enough when I can get it... really winds me up how they rather just pointlessly boost speeds every three years as opposed to actually improving their networks and coverage!

 

[TheShadowKnows!]

Nothing will be displaced unless your cell phone provider plans allow for unlimited streaming without throttling and massive changes in the way content providers and content distributors manage one another.

Correct.
There is always dependency on caps imposed by the cell providers, regardless of spectrum.

But fixed 5G service opens new markets opportunities to those that hold spectrum licenses.
HVEC/H.265 lossless compression + 5G mmwave frequencies are exactly the disruptive technologies that enable aggressive cellular providers (e.g. T-Mobile) to displace cable duopolies.

If there is money to be made, fixed 5G providers will call home.

 

[neutralguy]

Hey how about we get 100% coverage around the whole country first before we move beyond LTE?

AE

You know that it's not Qualcomm's fault that the cellular providers are not building infrastructure to provide 100% coverage. Don't blame it on Qualcomm because Apple is having a rift with them. Nor Qualcomm should stop innovating because of the sad state of coverage in USA.

 

[swm]

this immerse amount of hype around 5G and stuff is toxic. mmwave, that is like 25GHz+ and this is totally useless for any mobile device. it requires line of sight, will be attenuated by everything (glass, walls, foliage) significantly, and like or not, even with beamforming it has issues to follow you around. this might be a good case for FWA, but nothing like a smartphone. the truth is, that no one needs higher speeds in their handheld device that current LTE technology can safely deliver to them, unless it is speedtest.com all the time.
most operators were not able to get back their expenses that went into spectrum license for 4G and deploying new network elements, mobile core, etc, and the very _credible_ tech media sings epic songs about 5G now or newer.

 

[grkm3]

5g lets one burn through their data allowance in seconds. What’s the use unless your data plan is unlimited and non-throttled?

Believe it or not faster connections will allow providers to give us unlimited data and not throttle as much.

If you have 1000 people at the same time downloading a game or update that is say 1gb. they are taking up most of the towers bandwidth.

It would take each person around 10 minutes to download the file.

Now say we have a 6gz band running full 5g and gives people a true 1gb connection. You will download that file in 1 min and be off the tower to let the next person use the bandwidth.not only will the load drop on towers people will get better battery life because the modem can run quick blasts and receive lots of data in fraction of the time and go back to lo power state

 

[gavroche]

A video on 4G takes honestly 1 second to load, if that. With 4G we’re not on the “loading” phase of the internet anymore for most use-cases, unlike in the past when simple tech bumps would earn us a lot of extra time. Everything nowadays is instant, for the most part. You now gain seconds at best with tech improvements and the development of faster speeds will rather just enable us to do whole new things with the internet, as well as raise the fallback baseline in sub-optimal conditions.

If everything you do now is instantaneous, then you are most definitely living in a much better cell city than me. And no further technological advances needed.

 

[I7guy]

Believe it or not faster connections will allow providers to give us unlimited data and not throttle as much.

If you have 1000 people at the same time downloading a game or update that is say 1gb. they are taking up most of the towers bandwidth.

It would take each person around 10 minutes to download the file.

Now say we have a 6gz band running full 5g and gives people a true 1gb connection. You will download that file in 1 min and be off the tower to let the next person use the bandwidth.not only will the load drop on towers people will get better battery life because the modem can run quick blasts and receive lots of data in fraction of the time and go back to lo power state

That’s what “they” said about 4g. None of that came to pass, rising rates, throttling and deprioritization was the order of the day. And, The aggregate throughput is dependent on the back haul. So I don’t believe 5g is the answer to today’s 4g issues.

 

[stiligFox]

I’m rather concerned about the health effects of 5g and the fact that towers will have to be placed very close to each other due to limited range - fears may be exaggerated but I don’t see the need for faster speeds when LTE is already faster than my cable connection.

Having millimeter waves saturating every block from a tower placed on nearly every city block can’t be helpful for our electrical biology...

 

[dantroline]

5g lets one burn through their data allowance in seconds. What’s the use unless your data plan is unlimited and non-throttled?

This will follow.

If the video content you try watching suddenly loads faster... so you finish with it sooner... do you then stop and not do anything to wait until that moment that you would have finished watching, before doing other stuff?

If you work for a living, you might, you know, work with all that extra time you now have, or if you have free time you might find something creative to do. Otherwise you are invited to donate your money to the economy by wasting it on entertainment so others can have it instead.

But seriously, as bandwidth expands, data allowances have jumped with no real increase in cost. Expect change. I don't know if 5G is a good thing health wise, I've seen some articles alleging a link with 5G and cancer (search anything + cancer and you'll find an article!), but as for its effect on electronic devices - 5G is going to mean extremely fast data transfer and extremely good geolocation by the telco (and all associated agencies) without GPS.

 

[grkm3]

That’s what “they” said about 4g. None of that came to pass, rising rates, throttling and deprioritization was the order of the day. And, The aggregate throughput is dependent on the back haul. So I don’t believe 5g is the answer to today’s 4g issues.

4g is just a bandaid. You cant even compare the 2. The bandwidth between 4g and 5g is insanely higher than going from 3g to 4g.

3g to 4g was like adding 2 lanes extra to a freeway and increasing the speed limits 10mph.

5g is like adding 100 lanes and increasing the speed limit 200mph

 

[Naaaaak]

Anyone look up cancer impacts from millimeter wave tech?

 

[I7guy]

4g is just a bandaid. You cant even compare the 2. The bandwidth between 4g and 5g is insanely higher than going from 3g to 4g.

3g to 4g was like adding 2 lanes extra to a freeway and increasing the speed limits 10mph.

5g is like adding 100 lanes and increasing the speed limit 200mph

I still don’t see anything changing as long as the the big 4 are in charge of the air waves. But we’ll see.

 

[kdarling]

Anyone look up cancer impacts from millimeter wave tech?

There is none. It's not ionizing radiation. There's been no increase in brain cancer over the past couple decades of cell phones, and 5G should be no different.

Moreover, because 5G uses many neighborhood transmitters, it's possible to use much lower power than the current far more sparse cell system. Which also means lower power transmissions from the device you hold by your head.

Remember: all the worries about local cell towers are actually totally backwards. It's not having more towers that gives more radiation, it's when you have -fewer- towers that transmission power to cover the distance has to greatly increase... especially in your phone.

 

[Wanted797]

Your phone won’t start to load all the websites and videos you consume at once, as soon is it gets 5G. You will use the exact same data as in 4G as long as you don’t change your web usage habits. The pages and videos will just load sligthly faster.

You will use more data on 5G. Think about the changes 4G brought to data usage. When I got my first iPhone my data limit was 1GB. Today it’s 15GB.

If things load faster that will mean you will likely save a few minutes of time a day, that may mean that the 15 minutes you spend on your phone every morning you will download more and get more done. Also considering people might start watching videos in 1080p or 4K because they no longer have to wait as long.

We will use more data and phone companies will slowly offer more for us to use on their plans.

 

[jeremiah256]

Estimates are that within five years, world-wide, about 1B people will have access to (but not necessarily have or afford), 5G. Many of those people will be in the Asian Pacific region. From the recent 2018 Olympics in South Korea, to Japan hosting in 2020, and China in 2022, you are going to see 5G tech and tech based on 5G, progress and get pushed unlike anything you've ever seen, first to government and business, then to consumers.

INTEL seems like it has been very involved globally (2018 and 2020 Olympics) and sees 5G as a priority, so Apple should be fine. And I think a lot of people in this thread have underestimated the impact 4G has had up to this point, and are really underestimating the impact 5G will have on world economics.

 

[radiologyman]

5g's low latency should enable new uses where latency is critical. Like self driving cars talking to each other

 

[jeremiah256]

5g's low latency should enable new uses where latency is critical. Like self driving cars talking to each other

Yep. Just looking at China alone, they are working hard on combining 5G and AI in exactly these types of scenarios, building smart super highways for smart vehicles, especially haulers.

 

[bommai]

Here's the problem:

It is all about population density. Not all land is equal.

 

[fraslo]

There are many websites, YouTube videos etc talking about the dangers of 5G.
The research on the affects on our environment, health, etc is being ignored.
Potential profit seems to be the only thing companies are concerned about...

Here for instance one can find some solid info:

https://www.electricsense.com/12399/5g-radiation-dangers/

https://whatis5g.info/

 

[gavroche]

It is all about population density. Not all land is equal.

Well, according to that map there is noone in Wyoming then!

 

[Delgibbons]

This is innovation.
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Pretty neat stuff...I presumed Intel its not getting this technology. I think Apple will not need to crawl back to Qualcomm - otherwise they will fall too far behind.

Probably be about 50% slower using the Intel chip vs qualcomm. Intel are not even in the same ballpark.