10 ms·
It's the annual incremental improvement, and many will like the smaller form factor too I'm guessing. But the whole 5G hype is lost on me. Specifically, none
by supernova87a 6y ago
It's the annual incremental improvement, and many will like the smaller form factor too I'm guessing.
But the whole 5G hype is lost on me. Specifically, none of the carriers or handset makers are telling me how much the data will cost. Maybe I'm a little price-focused, but that determines for me whether I'm excited about it.
If I'm just burning through my existing data limit faster, what's the point? What's the pricing of this new data capability?
- macjohnmcc 6y agoyeah my carrier (Verizon) doesn't have good enough coverage for me to enjoy the full speed that 4G can offer so I don't care to pay more for 5G when it has little to no chance to meet the promised performance.
- suyash 6y agoYup, multiple incremental improvements is what I heard, will pass on this one and wait for iPhone 13 now.
- strombofulous 6y agoI really hope that we come back to this comment in 10 years and it's weird that this was ever a concern (like what happened with texting/voice)
- supernova87a 6y agoWell, I hope so too! But it's in the intermediate stage when things are scarce that the price matters, or rate-limiting/throttling/etc matters. You go to South Korea, and they would laugh to think that the US has monthly bandwidth limits, or is talking about net neutrality. Speed and pipe size take care of all issues some distant day in the future. Yet here we are, living in the past.
- wow_no 6y agoSouth Korea doesn’t have net neutrality and is more oligopolistic than the US
- OwlsParlay 6y agoFor tthe number one economy, the US is weirdly backwards when it comes to technology and infrastructure.
- barbecue_sauce 6y agoMuch of that economy is built on having very specific inefficiencies.
- jjackson21 6y agoIt is a feature of our democracy. Incumbents buy power, power maintains power. Technology and innovation suffer.
- rweir 6y agoit's already a weird USA-specific question, even in Australia, world leader in rich-country-shitty-internet, it's not an expensive addon.
- illuminati1911 6y agoThe whole 5G thing is just complete bullshit. After the tech has flopped pretty much worldwide and Verizon's and AT&T's "5G REMOTE SURGERY" and "RACE TO 5G" marketing bs didn't get consumers interested, they finally decided as a last resort to pay Apple and see if that will be enough to push this technology through.
- endlessvoid94 6y agoNegative. It will be a slower rollout due to the costs and infrastructure requirements, but 5g (from Verizon at least) will be faster than your home cable connection. That's a big deal.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Nextgrid 6y agoLTE already allows 150Mbps symmetrical on an iPhone 8 (real-world speed test in London), and probably more on the newer phones. The problem with mobile data has never been the raw speed - that is already fast enough. The problem was always how it's being sold (whether data caps, the overall - terrible - customer experience and the BS the industry is constantly pulling like AT&T sharing data for marketing purposes), and switching to a different technology won't magically change that.
- tjohns 6y agoFrom a technical perspective, it actually is a bit of a problem. First, remember that speed is shared with everyone using the same tower (sector) as you. As data usage goes up, that will drop. In a major city where cell density is high it's less of a problem, but it's already an issue in more rural/suburban areas where cells are larger. There are plenty of places in the US that have LTE coverage, but the speed is actually pretty poor. Second, there are some limit on the number of devices each tower can support. With embedded devices increasingly relying on cellular, we're expecting to hit those limits. So 5G allows for future system growth. And as for data caps... more available bandwidth does help lower prices. Those prices are, at least in part, set in order to manage system load. More capacity means they can relax the pricing and/or caps.
- pantulis 6y agoThat's the carrier stuff, they will figure it out. Remember how ridiculous were data caps with GMTS?
- nlitened 6y agoHey, there are iPhone users not only in US, but also in countries with cheap data plans!
- isoprophlex 6y agoI had the misfortune of charging my iPhone via usb connected to my laptop while working. This triggered the 4G tethering, so i spent an afternoon working on my cellular data plan... schlepping multi-gb csv files around. I didn't even notice anything, until my data plan ran out. I honestly wouldn't mind slower than 4G speeds. With 4G it's already bordering on ridiculous how quickly you can burn up a data plan.
- jpxw 6y agoSurely 5G can only make sense on an unlimited plan. Or the limits are going to have to become ridiculously big. You could burn a 30G/month limit in 10 seconds in “ideal conditions”.
- dylan604 6y agoYour laptop chose to override an existing WiFi/LAN connection to use a tethered phone USB connection? That seems highly unusual. I plug my phone into my laptop all of the time, and the tether has never overridden my WiFi. I've never had to use it, but macOS allows you to order the available networks according to your preference. Did you perhaps do this and forgot about it?
- Nextgrid 6y ago> Your laptop chose to override an existing WiFi/LAN connection to use a tethered phone USB connection? Tethered phones are considered Ethernet interfaces by many operating systems so they would typically take priority over a wireless connection, unless the system has an explicit override for it like macOS does.
- isoprophlex 6y agoNot on macos when this happened, Linux mint cinnamon... it definitely prioritizes my phone above the wifi
- asutekku 6y agoA lot of countries do not have data caps in europe. For example i’m paying ~$25 a month for unlilimited 100mbps 4g connection and unlimited 1gbps 5g is available for around $40/month.
- gnicholas 6y agoI called AT&T to look into their service, and the rep said "all of our plans are unlimited data, it's just a question of how much you want to be able to hotspot". I can see why they're reframing things to call all their plans 'unlimited' in a 5G world, since most people will not sign up to pay more for 5G service. They will ask what the real-world difference will be, and then probably decline to pay even $10/mo more for it. But if everything is 'unlimited' and they're differentiating based on amount of hotspot or throttling after a certain point, they're effectively charging you for high speed without making it seem like a surcharge. After 20 seconds on the phone I knew it wasn't for me. I rarely leave the house during COVID, so I hardly use any data. I'm saving 50% going with a different company.
- offtop5 6y agoMost of the time you hit soft caps at 40gb, with 4gbp you can hit your cap in 40 seconds !
- chrisseaton 6y ago> none of the carriers or handset makers are telling me how much the data will cost Data is included in my contract where I live - is that not the case where you live? > If I'm just burning through my existing data limit faster, what's the point? To get the same data... faster? Isn't that good? And is your data limited in some way? I never ever reach my limit no matter what I do.