All carriers are gearing up for G5, Samsung already has a phone out. AT&T has put out their own G (Almost Five). So it's just around the corner. Will we winter/spring adapters regret buying to soon?
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G5; maybe we should have waited 6-8 months?
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Because 5G is millimeter wave-based, it is short range and heavily affected by obstructions (even foliage and rain attenuation) and will require a lot of cellular base stations to provide coverage. It's going to be some time before it's prevalent in even large urban areas. Outlying areas - forget it.
Most people don't understand/realize the technologies to be used with 5G and the limitations they entail. I think there's going to be a lot of disappointment.
I think AT&T's "5Ge" may be more interesting for those of us in the suburbs. https://arstechnica.com/information...-isnt-for-widespread-coverage-verizon-admits/
When it is available (as a whole) for the masses, it is going to cost more than the current 4G LTE. At this point in time. I don't see a need for me to focus on making sure I have a device that is capable of 5G, My 4G LTE can easily stream HD tv.
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Given its limitations, 5G will probably roll out in areas that already have good 4G coverage (dense urban) and likely will cost more than 4G. I think the initial customer base will be commercial, where the need for higher bandwidth can justify what will probably be higher cost. I'd actually rather see the providers putting more money into extending 4G coverage to areas that are poorly served now.
That’s the problem with 5G. If it’s just around the corner, you probably won’t be able to receive it— it won’t penetrate those buildings.
I don't think it's that far away, people said the same thing about 3G and 4G. Next year this time we'll have 5G all over. If you live in a large metro area you'll have access to it within months with a 4G backup. I believe apple will be pushing 5g devices later this year. Vz will slap AT&T with true 5G, Spint will follow, as AT&T will finally get their act together. 5G devices will be on every half time commercial and people's desire will follow. There is only so much MFG's can do with these phones. But 5G will kick new life and long lines for the carriers. Admittedly I've already upgraded my iPad to the 11 and have no regretes. 4G fine for me, and I'm very happy with the IPP 11. But this fall 5G will be on everyone's mind.
And I thought this thread was about switching to Intel 6-8 months too early... oh well...Long Live the G5 
Yup they will be gearing up throughout all of 2019 as well.
2021 is right around the corner as well.
I hope apple wont be pushing devices with 5g this year, if they will I won’t be purchasing any of them.
Your way to optimistic regarding 5gs roll out.
As you mentioned there are a handful of android phones that will have 5g this year, wont be touching any of them either.
According to every analyst out there Apple is not shipping a 5G product in 2019, and some don’t even think it’s happening in 2020.
We won't have it all over because of its limitations. It will only make sense in dense urban environments and the significant amount of required infrastructure to support it will take time to deploy. It is a much different animal than 3G or 4G.
https://arstechnica.com/information...scale-beyond-dense-urban-areas-t-mobile-says/
AT&T's current "5G" is not 5G. It's just a recent iteration of 4G, that's not really any better than the other major carriers' 4G.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "widespread" and "years", but in my city (Toronto) testing for 5G on my provider is 2019, with a planned rollout in 2020. So, more like a "year" to "years" for my city, but likely "years" for other locations.
So, I will likely not buy an iPhone 2019. I'll probably hold out with my battery-upgraded 7 Plus for a 5G iPhone 2020.
On my carrier, usually the times when they upgrade the service, the plan cost stays exactly the same, or else goes up say 5-10%, and you get the new speeds. They don't offer more data though. If you want more data, you have to sign onto a newer plan at a higher price.
The times this has not been true is when they had unlimited plans. ie. When they had 2G unlimited, they didn't offer a free upgrade to 3G unlimited.
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A friend in Europe asked me why there is not more concern about the potential negative health affects of 5G here in the US like over there. After looking at the potential risks, I wonder if we should be so anxious to roll out those 5G transmitters with so little knowledge of the long term exposure to it.
Meh. People worried about FM radio, then GSM, then 2G, then 3G, then 4G, and now 5G.
If people really are concerned about their health, perhaps they should stop smoking and drinking too much, stop filling up on french fries and cheese cake, and get some exercise.
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Wow, I remember when I as a Droid fan and the HTC Thunderbolt came out as one of the first phones with 4G LTE! I could use it for 3-4 hours before it completely drained the battery. One of the forced adware apps (Blockbuster) got stuck downloading movie thumbnails non-stop and drained the battery even faster --- killing the app didn't work because it would start right back up. Took Verizon awhile to fix that. But I remember having my HTC Thunderbolt in Airplane Mode for awhile until it was fixed. lol.
Yeah no... I won't regret anything. All these new fandangled technologies can sit around and get perfected before I use them. I'm too old for that stuff now.
Yeah no... I won't regret anything. All these new fandangled technologies can sit around and get perfected before I use them. I'm too old for that stuff now.
Battery life will likely not be a major issue with 2020 5G phones. With some 2019 5G phones maybe, but by 2020 the chips will be lower power.
Apple probably wouldn't have capitulated to Qualcomm this early if Qualcomm's 5G chips for 2020 iPhones were power hogs.
Ah yes, the Thunderbolt. If I remember correctly it had a fairly large display too.(For the time anyway) That early period of touchscreen smartphones was really cool, it's definitely less varied now.
I don't get the 5G hype myself. Current LTE is fast enough, if we could reduce congestion I think we'd be golden. It's not that I am opposed to faster speeds necessarily, but I don't see why we are in such a hurry.
With regards to congestion, at least in my area, when 4G LTE was introduced, it was not very congested, and 3G was quite congested. I suspect the same thing will happen with 5G. 4G LTE is at times congested, particularly in certain locations, but those with 5G will enjoy lower congestion, at least for the first few years before everyone has a 5G phone.
Unlike 4G, because 5G signals cannot penetrate buildings and will require additional equipment for indoor use, it will be interesting to see what congestion occurs (and how useful 5G will be to users).
It could be an issue in some countries, but it's all about the bands. In Canada for example, my carrier Rogers will be using 600 MHz for 5G. 600 MHz actually will penetrate better than most 4G bands. (Technically I'm on Fido, but it uses the network of its parent company Rogers.) T-Mobile in the US will be doing the same thing. I don't know about Qualcomm's chips at this point, but given that both T-Mobile and Rogers are doing nationwide 600 MHz 5G, I suspect Qualcomm's 2020 lower power chips will support this. BTW, inside big shopping malls, our carriers often use repeaters anyway, even for 4G.
Rogers bets $1.7 billion on 600MHz for Canadian 5G, mirroring T-Mobile
Rather than peppering a handful of cities with short-distance, super-fast millimeter wave 5G hardware, a major cellular carrier will blanket a large country with long-distance, slower 600MHz towers to establish nationwide coverage. Third-place U.S. carrier T-Mobile pioneered that approach last year, and now top Canadian wireless carrier Rogers says it will use the same strategy for its 5G network.
Though T-Mobile likely doesn’t care about external validation for its 5G strategy, which ran completely counter to Verizon’s and AT&T’s initial focus on millimeter wave hardware, there’s no question that Rogers saw wisdom in mimicking it for the vast Canadian landscape. Rogers spent $1.7 billion for 20-year licenses to 600MHz spectrum blanketing Ontario, Northern Quebec, Atlantic Canada, Manitoba, and all three territories, which it expects will enable its 5G network to achieve everything from urban building penetration to powering agricultural, mining, industrial, and transportation projects.
This approach sacrifices speed to a certain extent, but it means a faster rollout (including in rural areas) and you still get the other 5G advantages.
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Meh. People worried about FM radio, then GSM, then 2G, then 3G, then 4G, and now 5G.
If people really are concerned about their health, perhaps they should stop smoking and drinking too much, stop filling up on french fries and cheese cake, and get some exercise.
It that real? That can’t be real.