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iPhone XS Max Why do you need 5G?

1. 5G reduces latency to make realtime multiplayer gaming reasonable.
2. Crowded events like sports or festivals can benefit substantially from 5G capacity (ever been to a club with full bars only to find that websites don't load at all? 5G will fix that)
 
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As with most technology advancements, it's the application we don't currently know but will eventually come to depend on that will be made possible that is the real reason. I just want to be ahead of the curve so I'm not playing catch up when it happens.

And it ALWAYS happens.
 
My fake 5G (5Ge) is pretty decent, however latency is still an issue.
I also hot spot a lot.
 

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Sledneck52 said:
Just asking. Not really sure why someone would need 5G speeds other then to see them on Ookla. What do you do on your phone that would warrant 5G over 4G LTE?
"Most" people are just checking social media, lite browsing, email and occasional streaming. Even 4K only needs 15-20mbps down if not less on a mobile device.

Where I live, I get 70-90mbps at best down on T-mobile and I am in a rural area. Typically I will get 40-50mbps when the towers are congested.
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I didn't go through all the responses, although I did see someone mention that it would enable using the mobile phone provider as the primary internet provider.

Also -- once the speed goes up and a lot of people are using it, then the web will become more bandwidth intensive -- apps will probably just assume that you have the higher speed. So the current 4G LTE will probably still be 'adequate', but will 'feel' slow compared to 5G.

But I get why you asked the question!
 
Not at all. I don’t need faster speeds or anything else than what my phone can do right now. I don’t download anything large on LTE and there’s WiFi everywhere if I’d need to download something big, but that almost never happens.
 
J.Dillinger said:
Do you realize a wall can stop 5G in its tracks? 🤔
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That's a limitation due to the type of 5G implementation, specifically mmWave. It's a problem in the U.S., where carriers bet on mmWave.

Outside the U.S., it won't be a problem. I've tried 5G in China, where 5G uses mid-band. It punches through buildings like 4G. The deployments are similar in Canada, South Korea, UK, etc.
 
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I remember similar questions, "Why do you need more than 1GB hard drive?", "Why do you need more than 8MB of RAM?" Because it lays the foundation for new and better services and products. I imagine that Apple and others are laying down the foundation for tools and services like mobile AR/VR. Imagine the bandwidth requirements when everyone is wearing Apple Glasses streaming and receiving video feeds with AR 3D models and geographic data, constantly. 5G or 5G+ may not even be enough 10 years from now. This is just like more storage space, more memory, faster GPUs and CPUs from my perspective. We need it to do and create more new things we couldn't do yesterday.

I get 1Gbps/1Gbps and wish I had more. I think ultimately hardware, bandwidth, and latency won't be our problem with technology and advancements, but more the cost, and sadly, wealth disparity. The technology, the tools, the services, and the bandwidth to support them are coming, but it will likely become increasingly unaffordable for many. Imagine the next generation of educational technology, attending a full VR classroom, or instant access to the best AI tools to help you succeed at any endeavour. These could be available to anyone, any parent, any student, any business venture, but they probably won't be. And, only some people will gain extreme, ever-increasing competitive advantages.
 
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Sledneck52 said:
Just asking. Not really sure why someone would need 5G speeds other then to see them on Ookla. What do you do on your phone that would warrant 5G over 4G LTE?
"Most" people are just checking social media, lite browsing, email and occasional streaming. Even 4K only needs 15-20mbps down if not less on a mobile device.

Where I live, I get 70-90mbps at best down on T-mobile and I am in a rural area. Typically I will get 40-50mbps when the towers are congested.
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A rather inane question... I remember when some people said all of the below:

a.) "Why do you need a hard drive larger than 1GB on a desktop? - Larger than 100MB on a laptop?"
b.) "Why would anyone need more memory than 128MB on their desktop? - 64MB on their laptop?"
c.) "Why would we need a computer with a processor faster than 1.3GHz?

"It's just unnecessary and wasted space/memory/power...".

Come on, man... Progress. 5 years from now - even YOU will say: "I can't believe we used to walk around with just 4G speeds on our "speedy" little smartphones... Now I'm GLAD I have 9G connectivity on my iPhone 34 (or Galaxy Note 62...).
 
I pretty much ONLY use my phone as a portable computer; i.e., I make / receive fewer than 10 phone calls / year, but I'm on the Internet constantly: looking up things, consuming streaming media, Twitter / Facebook, etc. So, logically, faster data can't help but benefit me, however ...

I currently get 170Mbps on Sprint / TMobile LTE - not sure what benefit 5G would get me, when 170Mbps is already sheer overkill. Maybe some new features that will require that kind of bandwidth?

As others have said, I CAN see the benefit if I could replace my Spectrum Internet service, as right now, I'm only keeping it because it's the only provider in my area - we don't even watch cable TV anymore LOL.
 
So I personally don't really care about mm wave 5g (the one that's actually faster than 4g), I would really like 5g for the better the low band performance because it should increase coverage in rural areas.
 
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I live in an urban area, yet a semi-dead zone as far as my 4g and 3g signals go. Hoping for usable internet that doesn’t take a minute to load a page, or constantly drops out while streaming audio.
 
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VineRider said:
My wish for 5g is that someday I will be able to untether my home internet from my current provider. Home 5g over cellular could really open up competition. As it is, I have only two options for home internet where I live, and neither one is that great. Being able to choose from a variety of cellular options would likely drive better services as you would not be tied to whoever has physically installed cable or fiber in your neighborhood.

Regarding phone use, I really don't see a huge benefit to 5g for my usage at the present time. As the technology advances and matures, I am sure that will change.
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This. The only worthy answer. For virtually any one else it’s the “”look, I’m cool” factor. Too many know the cost of everything, but the value of nothing.
 
farewelwilliams said:
1. 5G reduces latency to make realtime multiplayer gaming reasonable.
2. Crowded events like sports or festivals can benefit substantially from 5G capacity (ever been to a club with full bars only to find that websites don't load at all? 5G will fix that)
Click to expand...
I don’t see this talked about much, though a few other posts in this thread have mentioned it. I don’t think it accounts for some of the consumer demand for 5G (I think a lot of consumers just look forward to the next great thing), but I think this would make a substantial difference for some users and some situations. (Yes the sports arena or the theme park where the density of users means that, despite decent signal strength, you get really slow / unresponsive connectivity.)
 
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michaelprescott said:
Yup. Why do you need 56k modem?
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Oh man. I remember trying to play Quake online back in the mid-90s and being so jealous of college students in dorms with fast connections (or the occasional DSL user). ”LPB’s”, they were called. Man, that latency on 56k.... 😂
 
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I’ve got no real need as I already get over 100mbps inside usually?
The only area it might get interesting is taking over your home broadband instead of fixed line. But we will see
 
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