I’m from Oxford also good to see someone else on here with a connection to Oxford is a small world lol. I’m with EE and there great reliable signal and find there services very good.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Other UK - Will Huawei being removed from 5G affect your 12 purchase decision?
- Thread starter SayCheese
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Maybe you mean MBit/s? That would be a more realistic throughput
No I meant Megabits. 70MB/s would be 560Mb/s - Why would I need half a Gigabit per second on a phone? I don't.
Lol networks funny things. Thame I know Thame not far. I’m inside of Oxford in the Headington area.
I have been living in Hongkong for about 2 years now and frequently travelled to China, so I believe I do have some insights.
About your first point: I don't know exactly what of their technology impressed you. One thing that is common in the whole country is mobile payments. Literally every Chinese is using Alipay or Wechat Pay all the time. However you have to see where this comes from: credit cards never really took off in China. Many people did not have traditional bank accounts, and especially in rural areas I assume it was hard to offer such services. Alipay and Wechat pay make these services suddenly easy to offer to everyone. On the other hand, it is a great monitoring tool and is used to control to population.
In big cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, even Nanjing or Hangzhou, there is generally high level of development. Their infrastructure is very good. However it comes with ubiquitous security checks at literally every subway or bus stop. Does that show a healthy society? Outside of these cities, the level of development (and people's income) is shockingly low. There are areas where you see more decades-old tricycle farming vehicles than actual cars.
With this background, you can be sure that they will use the access to 5G networks around the world to assert power.
Last edited by a moderator:
I took my driving theory test in Headington lol. I’m from Banbury in north Oxfordshire originally. I’m on O2 and the signal there is patchy but that might be to do with my parents house being built from cotswold stone lol.
I wouldn't buy or reject a phone just for having/not having 5G at this point. I consider it a "nice to have", not a must have.
I have a 5G phone, and to be honest, in day to day life there's very little difference. Yeah, it's cool from a nerd perspective to see speed tests over mobile data in excess of 600mbps. The few things I've noticed in real life:
- Apps do indeed download much faster. Downloading a large game (1GB+) takes around 30-40 seconds. Over 4G this could take a fair while.
- Streaming video buffers less. On 5G there's practically never any "oh sorry you were watching that, but I need to buffer for a second" moments, and videos start playing immediately, compared to 4G where there was normally a delay of a few seconds before playing.
- Tethering is far more reliable. On a laptop, it feels more like using a home broadband connection than mobile data.
Not exectly life changing stuff tbh. And as always, it depends on the network. Go to a cheap network like Three and you're probably not going to see much increase since their backbone is pretty much at capacity in alot of places as they sold a crap load of cheap unlimited data sims. Go with EE, and you'll get amazing throughput but you'll pay through the nose for it.
I have a 5G phone, and to be honest, in day to day life there's very little difference. Yeah, it's cool from a nerd perspective to see speed tests over mobile data in excess of 600mbps. The few things I've noticed in real life:
- Apps do indeed download much faster. Downloading a large game (1GB+) takes around 30-40 seconds. Over 4G this could take a fair while.
- Streaming video buffers less. On 5G there's practically never any "oh sorry you were watching that, but I need to buffer for a second" moments, and videos start playing immediately, compared to 4G where there was normally a delay of a few seconds before playing.
- Tethering is far more reliable. On a laptop, it feels more like using a home broadband connection than mobile data.
Not exectly life changing stuff tbh. And as always, it depends on the network. Go to a cheap network like Three and you're probably not going to see much increase since their backbone is pretty much at capacity in alot of places as they sold a crap load of cheap unlimited data sims. Go with EE, and you'll get amazing throughput but you'll pay through the nose for it.
Part of me does hope the iPhone 12’s (non Pro) will only be 4G in the hope the contracts will be cheaper. It’s pretty pointless at this point unless you live in a major city to have 5G but then again it’s already being offered on a lot of contracts at no extra cost. We’ll see.
I'm hoping that the networks continue to offer 5G at no extra cost. However, I guess eventually they'll charge for it as they'll need to recoup their investment.
As a Canadian, I'd be freaking proud of my government for banning Huawei from Canadian territory. Huawei need to stay in China only to spy Chinese people only. It's that simple.
I would not recommend buying any Huawei product, period. The security concerns are well known throughout the world.
Out of many reasons I want to get iPhone 12, 5G is probably at the bottom, below the new USB-C Lightning cable.
Huawai is 1/3 price compare as other major competitors such as Nokia under international market,
as opposite inside of china, Nokia whined their price in china is cheaper that Huawai but get nothing.
UK get cheap network and lower cost of carriers provider if use Huawai, and CCP can stop your country in a second as China face of great tension to freedom world.
Pragmatism, US sanctions of chipsets let Huawai hard to graduate the services reliability in coming years, even 4G support of Huawai may suspend.
BT is not happy on that but not bad as current Huawai can be continue use at least five years more and waiting for replace.
Unless super crazy city like that over-population such as Beijing or Mumbai or Rio de Janeiro that good for 5G to provide more capability, most Western and European even Tokyo or London will not get too much advantage as WIFI network full of city and people density low to cover the extra cost of 5G infrastructure, the only good applications is real-time video surveillance that local network is unable, as CCP like this so camera can hide under anywhere.
Even advertising said IoT is hungry of 5G networks is not true, 90% iOT is good running under current 4G, and other just need to improve the current 4G to lower latency.
as opposite inside of china, Nokia whined their price in china is cheaper that Huawai but get nothing.
UK get cheap network and lower cost of carriers provider if use Huawai, and CCP can stop your country in a second as China face of great tension to freedom world.
Pragmatism, US sanctions of chipsets let Huawai hard to graduate the services reliability in coming years, even 4G support of Huawai may suspend.
BT is not happy on that but not bad as current Huawai can be continue use at least five years more and waiting for replace.
Unless super crazy city like that over-population such as Beijing or Mumbai or Rio de Janeiro that good for 5G to provide more capability, most Western and European even Tokyo or London will not get too much advantage as WIFI network full of city and people density low to cover the extra cost of 5G infrastructure, the only good applications is real-time video surveillance that local network is unable, as CCP like this so camera can hide under anywhere.
Even advertising said IoT is hungry of 5G networks is not true, 90% iOT is good running under current 4G, and other just need to improve the current 4G to lower latency.
Couldn’t care less about 5G tbh. 4G is fine for my needs when I’m out on O2. 90+% of the time my phones on WiFi. I’ll be getting a 12 Pro Max if the specs are good to upgrade my 7+.