I guess it depends how poor the battery life will be with the first 5G phones this year, when 3G came out I had a phone that came with two batteries because the battery life was so bad. I can’t see Apple allowing it to be that bad though. I’m on a X so this is definitely an upgrade year for me 5G or not.
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Qualcomm Introduces Snapdragon X60, Smaller 5G Modem Suitable for 2021 iPhones
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So you're saying the LTE modem in your XS is useless because there still isn't 100% coverage?
this is my thinking as well:
Unless your iPad or iPhone is used as a modem, how optimize is Android or iOS. Set to take advantage of the carrier and data speeds?!
is navigating through the OS been optimized for speed (transitions and animations and such)
is the browser optimized for jumping and loading pages and reloading a page once the webmaster has updated this site?
will Files app be rapidly faster to use?
the rapid access to data is only part of the 5G puzzle. The access and use of data will need to rapidly change as well along with our human ability to adapt/use as well?
IG will that app natively consume a full days worth of data (posts IGTV videos pre-cached) for full offline viewing? Story updates etc?
All the more reason I plan on getting an 11 Pro in the next few months. 5g hardware just isn't good enough at this point so there isn't any reason to wait for the 12 Pro. Plus good/reliable 5g signal from the carriers is still a few years away at best (at least where I live).
"... the nest few months."
A few more months after than and the 2020 versions will be out.
If it were me ... unless my phone broke/died ... I might try to wait it out if I was contemplating something new.
For a 5g phone I will probably want to wait for something after the X60 modem. My first 5g phone will probably be either in 2022 or 2023.
I am thinking that it may take a year or so for all of the kinks to be ironed out in 5g and the chipsets, not specifically saying the x55 has issues.
5G is probably a couple years away just as a technology. Apple has correctly not rushed.
Actually that's not a dismal schedule.
I don't care what Apple has done in the past.
They weren't a year away.
They had put their eggs in the Intel basket for LTE and 5G.
So yes, its a start from scratch effort.
If it was not then they would not have signed a 6 year deal with Qualcomm with a two year extension option.
They haven't ever done LTE and to think that somehow they are less than two years away from a solution that does 4GLTE and 5G is a pipe dream. I work in chip development.
Even after they get a chip it will take 6-9 months of testing and certification before being approved to work on the various carriers.
You don't just make a cellular modem and put it in a phone without certification.
The X55 is Qualcomm's 2nd generation 5G modem. This x60 is the 3rd generation. This isn't some "version 1.0" tech at this point.
Qualcomm and Ericsson were doing equipment field demos back in 2018.
Qualcomm and Ericsson Successfully Make First 3GPP-compliant 5G NR Sub-6 GHz OTA Call with a Mobile Form Factor Device | Qualcomm
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM), and Ericsson announced the successful completion of a 3GPP Rel-15 spec compliant 5G NR over-the-air (OTA) call over sub-6 GHz bands on a smartphone form factor mobile
Telcom companies typically don't operate like some fly by night Slicon Valley pure software houses that through buggy product out there on their customer base and then incrementally fix the major bugs afterwards.
If deploying a $500M-1B worth of equipment out into the field there are usually some through testing before actually write checks that big for flakey equipment.
The major 1st gen bugs/kinks are far more likely not at the feet of the headset vendors with low experience levels; not the base infrastructure.
And the 1st gen chipset on the table in a year or two will be Apple's. In a year or two Qualcomm will be on gen 4 or 5. [ depending upon how much Apple does a 'redo' of the Intel 5G partially done implementation perhaps can pragmatically slap a gen 2 on Apple's first deployment... which would put it about where x55 is now. ]
I dunno. Sounds a little wimpy to me.
Our chips had cool code names, like Sledgehammer, and Jackhammer. And various other hammers, now that I think about it.
Never mind, nothing to see here.
At times it is, especially inside a building or remote area. I prefer to switch my iPhone to 3G because I have excellent coverage and it does't drain my battery trying to search for a better tower to connect to.
At times, parts of my body are useless, too. But I’m still cool lugging them around and expending calories sustaining them.
I’d rather not hold up development and the progress of technology just because less than 100% of use cases demand it. Hopefully you can keep making use of a switch to downgrade to an older network protocol if you want, while the rest of us can decide for ourselves how useful 5G is or isn’t...
Good luck testing this new technology. I still believe that for 95% of the time it won't work well because it's under development and it needs time to mature.