6 ms·

I'm confused, he's talking about the user outcome - improved battery life while consuming content. The technical reason is that the modem spends less time activ

I'm confused, he's talking about the user outcome - improved battery life while consuming content. The technical reason is that the modem spends less time active for the same amount of bandwidth.

hanspeter 8y ago
If given that most people charge their phone once a day and doesn't actually need more battery efficiency, and battery efficiency is the only benefit, are there then no actual benefit from 5G?
- arcticbull 8y ago
  Unless one day you could charge your phone once every two days? Or once a week! Like back in the day of the 3310, which had 22 hours of talk time and 31 days of standby. Or you could make the phone smaller/lighter/faster with the extra efficiency. I'm having trouble believing someone here on HN is arguing against improving technology. I sometimes forget to plug my phone in, maybe after traveling, maybe after drinking haha. I'm already super glad my phone will make it through a second day. Back in the iPhone 3G days? Not so much.
  - thatcat 8y ago
    Smaller/lighter/faster phones and battery banks are already available, without 5g. Why do you need 5g specifically? It's value has to exceed the value it destroys. Not all tech developments are net improvements.
    - arcticbull 8y ago
      Because they'll be even smaller/lighter/faster. That's what efficiency gets you. 5G is more efficient. There's really nothing else to say.
      - jackvalentine 8y ago
        So is it worth rolling out globally a very expensive new network which will cause negative externalities for that?
        sah2ed 8y ago
        That depends on whether the expected benefits greatly exceeds the costs of the new network and can offset the supposed negative externalities. expected benefits >> costs + supposed negative externalities
        thatcat 8y ago
        You could just as easily have switched those words and that would make just as much sense. supposed benefits << cost and expected negitive externalities
        jackvalentine 8y ago
        And that is why everyone is asking the question, rather than blindly accepting 5G as a desirable thing.
        Junk_Collector 8y ago
        This all seems kind of funny to me because these are almost the exact same arguments on why power lines are bad. They kill trees, they kill bugs, they cause kids to be hyper, they cause kids to be depressed, they cause cancer, they misalign the resonant frequency of your brain. A hundred years later I still hear the same arguments but never once has anything borne out. Can I get an argument against the 5G standard that doesn't amount to, "This may cause harm through an unknowable secondary mechanism despite roughly 100 years of evidence that it is safe."
        thatcat 8y ago
        Infrastructure is intrusive and imposes problems on the poorest people and wildlife who are forced to live near it, I'm not sure why you find that funny. The difference is people need power, not 5g. If you don't need it then why would you do it? There is no need for an argument to not waste money on useless infrastructure. E.g. Why not build only 4 lane highways instead of a side streets? Because it's unnecessary. The burden is on you to justify the expense and I don't see any clear justifications as to how this is in anyone's best interest outside of the telcos and <5% of users.
thatcat 8y ago
That's a technical feature. The user outcome is fuzzy because you don't know really how weather prediction interference and increased RFI will play out for users.
- arcticbull 8y ago
  Those are externalities unrelated to the phone or experience with it. I'm confident if 5G is widely deployed and it causes the stated problems we'll find a new way to predict the weather.
  - thatcat 8y ago
    Do you study atmospheric analysis? Weather prediction is not great currently and the weather is getting more volatile. Why should someone be allowed to implement a design at scale without testing and solving the downstream problems first? That's not how engineering works.
ledzep2 8y ago
Cell on my phone contributes like less than 10% of total battery consumption. The most goes to screen and cpu. So there's limited improvement for 5G in this. But for IoT devices in which comms use most of the battery, this could be significant. However, it's debatable whether spending on billions of dollars on a regional 5g network is an optimal solution for a more durable IoT infrastructure. In my understanding, there should be a more economical way to build an efficient IoT infrastructure since most of them don't need that much data speed.
- hanselot 7y ago
  I thought the next logical step for mobile would be mesh-based networking. Is that just a pipe dream?
- SeanAppleby 8y ago
  I agree with your point on power consumption and agree that probably doesn't warrant the investment. I don't work on cellular infrastructure, and don't even work on IoT anymore, but I could imagine that as far as IoT infrastructure is concerned, it might not be that any specific devices need a large amount of throughput to provide their services, but that the aggregate of a potentially very larger number of devices needing access to data services could test the throughput of the collective infrastructure, and redesigning that infrastructure to be able to have more throughput could be key, not to a future with some magical usecase of some specific types of devices, but to a future with a much larger number of simple networked devices working in concert to make the world more efficient in the aggregate. That said, is the timing right? I don't know. It does kind of seem like it is driven more by politics than technical necessity.
jackvalentine 8y ago
Okay I have 10% extra battery life - what can I do with that I’m not already doing? Extra battery life is a feature, not an outcome.
- arcticbull 8y ago
  The outcome is your phone lasts longer. And your experience with it improves as the network is more available when you need it.
  - jackvalentine 8y ago
    My phone lasts longer and that lets me _____ Nobody is wandering around wanting their phone to last longer purely for that sake.
    - AaronFriel 8y ago
      Lets you use your phone for longer between charges. You're acting like battery life isn't a user feature, but it is: companies advertise heavily on it, and it can often be a differentiator between midrange and premium phones. You're looking for a user story where only looking at the corollary makes it obvious that battery life enables everything else. Suppose you shipped a phone with 99% less battery life than its competitors. You could, at trivial expense, increase your 1% to 10%, your engineers propose how to do so. You reply, "My phone lasts longer and that lets me _____". To which your engineers reply, "Use your phone?"

I'm confused, he's talking about the user outcome - improved battery life while consuming content. The technical reason is that the modem spends less time active for the same amount of bandwidth.

hanspeter 8y ago

If given that most people charge their phone once a day and doesn't actually need more battery efficiency, and battery efficiency is the only benefit, are there then no actual benefit from 5G?

arcticbull 8y ago
Unless one day you could charge your phone once every two days? Or once a week! Like back in the day of the 3310, which had 22 hours of talk time and 31 days of standby. Or you could make the phone smaller/lighter/faster with the extra efficiency. I'm having trouble believing someone here on HN is arguing against improving technology. I sometimes forget to plug my phone in, maybe after traveling, maybe after drinking haha. I'm already super glad my phone will make it through a second day. Back in the iPhone 3G days? Not so much.
- thatcat 8y ago
  Smaller/lighter/faster phones and battery banks are already available, without 5g. Why do you need 5g specifically? It's value has to exceed the value it destroys. Not all tech developments are net improvements.
  - arcticbull 8y ago
    Because they'll be even smaller/lighter/faster. That's what efficiency gets you. 5G is more efficient. There's really nothing else to say.
    - jackvalentine 8y ago
      So is it worth rolling out globally a very expensive new network which will cause negative externalities for that?
      - sah2ed 8y ago
        That depends on whether the expected benefits greatly exceeds the costs of the new network and can offset the supposed negative externalities. expected benefits >> costs + supposed negative externalities
        thatcat 8y ago
        You could just as easily have switched those words and that would make just as much sense. supposed benefits << cost and expected negitive externalities
        jackvalentine 8y ago
        And that is why everyone is asking the question, rather than blindly accepting 5G as a desirable thing.
        Junk_Collector 8y ago
        This all seems kind of funny to me because these are almost the exact same arguments on why power lines are bad. They kill trees, they kill bugs, they cause kids to be hyper, they cause kids to be depressed, they cause cancer, they misalign the resonant frequency of your brain. A hundred years later I still hear the same arguments but never once has anything borne out. Can I get an argument against the 5G standard that doesn't amount to, "This may cause harm through an unknowable secondary mechanism despite roughly 100 years of evidence that it is safe."
        thatcat 8y ago
        Infrastructure is intrusive and imposes problems on the poorest people and wildlife who are forced to live near it, I'm not sure why you find that funny. The difference is people need power, not 5g. If you don't need it then why would you do it? There is no need for an argument to not waste money on useless infrastructure. E.g. Why not build only 4 lane highways instead of a side streets? Because it's unnecessary. The burden is on you to justify the expense and I don't see any clear justifications as to how this is in anyone's best interest outside of the telcos and <5% of users.

thatcat 8y ago

That's a technical feature. The user outcome is fuzzy because you don't know really how weather prediction interference and increased RFI will play out for users.

arcticbull 8y ago
Those are externalities unrelated to the phone or experience with it. I'm confident if 5G is widely deployed and it causes the stated problems we'll find a new way to predict the weather.
- thatcat 8y ago
  Do you study atmospheric analysis? Weather prediction is not great currently and the weather is getting more volatile. Why should someone be allowed to implement a design at scale without testing and solving the downstream problems first? That's not how engineering works.

ledzep2 8y ago

Cell on my phone contributes like less than 10% of total battery consumption. The most goes to screen and cpu. So there's limited improvement for 5G in this. But for IoT devices in which comms use most of the battery, this could be significant. However, it's debatable whether spending on billions of dollars on a regional 5g network is an optimal solution for a more durable IoT infrastructure. In my understanding, there should be a more economical way to build an efficient IoT infrastructure since most of them don't need that much data speed.

hanselot 7y ago
I thought the next logical step for mobile would be mesh-based networking. Is that just a pipe dream?
SeanAppleby 8y ago
I agree with your point on power consumption and agree that probably doesn't warrant the investment. I don't work on cellular infrastructure, and don't even work on IoT anymore, but I could imagine that as far as IoT infrastructure is concerned, it might not be that any specific devices need a large amount of throughput to provide their services, but that the aggregate of a potentially very larger number of devices needing access to data services could test the throughput of the collective infrastructure, and redesigning that infrastructure to be able to have more throughput could be key, not to a future with some magical usecase of some specific types of devices, but to a future with a much larger number of simple networked devices working in concert to make the world more efficient in the aggregate. That said, is the timing right? I don't know. It does kind of seem like it is driven more by politics than technical necessity.

jackvalentine 8y ago

Okay I have 10% extra battery life - what can I do with that I’m not already doing? Extra battery life is a feature, not an outcome.

arcticbull 8y ago
The outcome is your phone lasts longer. And your experience with it improves as the network is more available when you need it.
- jackvalentine 8y ago
  My phone lasts longer and that lets me _____ Nobody is wandering around wanting their phone to last longer purely for that sake.
  - AaronFriel 8y ago
    Lets you use your phone for longer between charges. You're acting like battery life isn't a user feature, but it is: companies advertise heavily on it, and it can often be a differentiator between midrange and premium phones. You're looking for a user story where only looking at the corollary makes it obvious that battery life enables everything else. Suppose you shipped a phone with 99% less battery life than its competitors. You could, at trivial expense, increase your 1% to 10%, your engineers propose how to do so. You reply, "My phone lasts longer and that lets me _____". To which your engineers reply, "Use your phone?"