4 ms·
5G seems to me like planned obsolesence of 4G with only an incremental improvement. 4G was supposed to be "Long-Term Evolution". I had thought that meant forwar
by throwaway74737 5y ago
5G seems to me like planned obsolesence of 4G with only an incremental improvement. 4G was supposed to be "Long-Term Evolution". I had thought that meant forward- and backward-compatibility for decades. Granted, latency is much lower. Did I get taken by marketing?
With 6G deployment already being projected, when I don't even know anybody with a 5G handset, it also seems like a make-work technology.
Deployment of a new wireless technology throughout a national wireless carrier, let alone all carriers in a country the size of the US, or in the world, is such a huge undertaking in terms of environmental resources, that it seems almost irresponsible unless there is a significant improvement.
2G was a quantum leap over 1G analog networks. In 2G networks like GSM, the digital communications stack was so tightly integrated, and as optimized as a 1990s video game, that even everyday layman users knew stories like "I could send an emergency SMS from the middle of nowhere even when there was no signal". It seems like that kind of robustness is missing the more abstract and higher-level these wireless generations go.
- hencoappel 5y agoJust staying on 4G doesn't sell new phones.
- symlinkk 5y ago5G doesn’t sell phones either. I don’t know anyone who cares about it whatsoever.
- rolph 5y agoi care about it a lot. my phone worked fine, reliably and im not in an area where bandwidth is a problem yet ATT deactivated my phone shipped out a "new better model" i get a 5G googlized flipphone from them, thats not all. i get about 2 and ahalf or three bars reception at best, my phone now drops connections, and drops network, and i only have to charge it twice a day 5G brings obvious improvements, just ask the airline industry, they have some things to say as well
- readflaggedcomm 5y agoOwning your own phone outright often solves this rent-to-own upgrade problem.
- rolph 5y agothe thing is i did own it out right, ATT just decided no more of that phone you have to have what we give you
- rdtwo 5y agoConsumers will pay the extra 100$ for the feature but it won’t make them buy new phones
- the_only_law 5y agoI still have no idea what the hell LTE is or how it relates to 4G after trying to read up on it.
- WastingMyTime89 5y agoI have a 5G handset. I keep it disabled. The rare speed up is not worth the battery cost.
- charcircuit 5y ago4G is much cheaper to deploy over a region than 5G since you don't need as many towers.
- BenjiWiebe 5y agoI keep seeing this repeated but I'm pretty sure this isn't true. The 5G protocol also runs on the same frequencies as 4G, but with slightly improved range and bandwidth. 5G mmWave (or whatever it's called) is the 60Ghz very short range version with way higher bandwidth.
- ksec 5y agoBecause most people confuse 5G or True 5G = mmWave. It is actually quite tiring.
- ksec 5y ago>With 6G deployment already being projected, when I don't even know anybody with a 5G handset, it also seems like a make-work technology. Well you can bet there will be at least 200M 5G iPhone by the end of next year. That is iPhone 12+. By 2023 the should be 1.5B 5G Smartphones. 5G is pretty damn good in many ways and solve most of the teething problems in 4G. Especially in densely populated areas. Not entirely sure about 6G though.
- glecedric 5y agoThe 4G core is derived from the one built for the GSM. Sure it was updated here and there but it still runs some piece of software from the 1990. Whereas with the 5G, the core was redone from scratch: everything is a micro-service, a service mesh for discovery and subscription, etc ... . This base will be kept for ~30 years. So the 6G is going to be a "simple" extension of the 5G.