5G hype

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MrSquished

Lifer
Jan 14, 2013
21,004
19,441
136
I have a Pixel 6a, wife has a Samsung S22, 4G is much faster than 5G on both, at least in the limited locations I've checked, where both were available.

Verizon.
A Pixel? Go to settings >Network and Internet.

Find the SIMS setting which should say Verizon under it. Scroll down and select LTE as preferred network.

Thank me later
 

Muadib

Lifer
May 30, 2000
17,914
838
126
I have a Pixel 6a, wife has a Samsung S22, 4G is much faster than 5G on both, at least in the limited locations I've checked, where both were available.

Verizon.

Did you reuse your old SIM cards?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Nov 17, 2019
10,668
6,389
136
I just got forced on to VZW by TracFone. Service degraded from the AT&T SIM I had. I have a TMobile SIM but not sure I want to try it.



Sent from my fingers using my keyboard.
 

MtnMan

Diamond Member
Jul 27, 2004
8,722
7,824
136
Did you reuse your old SIM cards?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Nope.

I initially swapped the SIM (I purchased the phone from Google, not Verizon), and everything worked, but I kept getting messages from Verizon about registering my SIM, but kept saying the ICCID number was invalid. Got a new one from Verizon, and it took almost an hour on the phone with them to get that one to work.

So now have Verizon supplied SIM.
 

MtnMan

Diamond Member
Jul 27, 2004
8,722
7,824
136
A Pixel? Go to settings >Network and Internet.

Find the SIMS setting which should say Verizon under it. Scroll down and select LTE as preferred network.

Thank me later
Thanks for trying, but I've already been there, none that.

Yes, that is how I get the damn thing to work. On 5G I had about 100K download speed, went into those settings and chose 4G, and speed jumped to 20/Mbps, while sitting in exactly the same spot.

According to "Network Analyzer Pro" app on my phone, the signal strength for 5G and 4G were virtually the same. I was waiting for the wife at her doctor's office, so I had time to play with this.
 

MrSquished

Lifer
Jan 14, 2013
21,004
19,441
136
Thanks for trying, but I've already been there, none that.

Yes, that is how I get the damn thing to work. On 5G I had about 100K download speed, went into those settings and chose 4G, and speed jumped to 20/Mbps, while sitting in exactly the same spot.

According to "Network Analyzer Pro" app on my phone, the signal strength for 5G and 4G were virtually the same. I was waiting for the wife at her doctor's office, so I had time to play with this.

It's not going to make 5G better. Only the carrier increasing signal strength via more or upgraded equipment (or frequencies) will do that. But this will prevent the phone from even trying to use the 5G network, so you will stay on the faster 4G and save battery as it is not constantly switching/searching for service on a low signal 5G network. If you head to an area with lots of good 5G coverage, just turn it back on.
 

Captante

Lifer
Oct 20, 2003
30,244
10,748
136
Thanks for trying, but I've already been there, none that.

Yes, that is how I get the damn thing to work. On 5G I had about 100K download speed, went into those settings and chose 4G, and speed jumped to 20/Mbps, while sitting in exactly the same spot.

According to "Network Analyzer Pro" app on my phone, the signal strength for 5G and 4G were virtually the same. I was waiting for the wife at her doctor's office, so I had time to play with this.


Unfortunately you're at the mercy of the distance to closest repeaters/towers to your home and the technology Verizon has installed on them.
 

MtnMan

Diamond Member
Jul 27, 2004
8,722
7,824
136
It's not going to make 5G better. Only the carrier increasing signal strength via more or upgraded equipment (or frequencies) will do that. But this will prevent the phone from even trying to use the 5G network, so you will stay on the faster 4G and save battery as it is not constantly switching/searching for service on a low signal 5G network. If you head to an area with lots of good 5G coverage, just turn it back on.
That's why the title of this thread... unless you are in a big metropolitan area, 5G is a just a bunch of hype... and the last fucking place I want to be is in a big metropolitan area... too many people.
 
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Captante

Lifer
Oct 20, 2003
30,244
10,748
136
That's why the title of this thread... unless you are in a big metropolitan area, 5G is a just a bunch of hype... and the last fucking place I want to be is in a big metropolitan area... too many people.

Exactly... A quick look at a map of all cell-towers in greater New Haven shows at least 21 active within 3 miles of me and 8 within 3/4's of a mile.

Big surprise I have a strong signal... I'm being microwaved where I sit! ;)
 

MtnMan

Diamond Member
Jul 27, 2004
8,722
7,824
136
Unfortunately you're at the mercy of the distance to closest repeaters/towers to your home and the technology Verizon has installed on them.
At my home, I don't care, my Wi-Fi is great, and the firewall on my router, plus ad blocking keeps a lot of crap off my phone, and every other device.
 

Scarpozzi

Lifer
Jun 13, 2000
26,389
1,777
126
A 4K movie on a 6 inch device... why
I watch 4K movies on a 65" 4K screen.
Beats me. I grew up watching snow on a 13" b&w tv with rabbit ears. I don't understand kids today....but apparently the majority of movies are being formatted for 4k and scaled down to 720p to save bandwidth. I use mobile hotspot on T-Mobile with my Roku so no idea what that looks like for bandwidth since so much is cached....I just know it works and quality is fine.
 

KMFJD

Lifer
Aug 11, 2005
29,043
41,727
136
When attached to 5g I can definitely tell here….

/ran out of data, 6gb for 2.19$! Wtf
 

JM Aggie08

Diamond Member
Jan 3, 2006
8,148
776
136
We've got 5G UC coverage on T-Mobile where we live. Shit is blazing fast, pushing 250-300Mbps. Far more than I'd ever really need on my phone, since the most I'm doing is navigating or streaming Spotify.

...but it's the principal. I HAS IT.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,194
12,025
126
www.anyf.ca
When attached to 5g I can definitely tell here….

/ran out of data, 6gb for 2.19$! Wtf

That is exactly my point to why I feel these high speeds on mobile are kinda pointless. Its like having a Tesla Plaid but running off a single drill battery. You can go fast, but not very far. If you're lucky enough to have unlimited data it's one thing but that's either very expensive or simply not available for most people.

Now I kinda want to see a NASCAR race with EVs that use 100's of drill batteries that just snap all over the car... the pit stops would be entertaining.
 
Nov 29, 2006
15,598
4,049
136
I have Tmobile 5G home internet. Just got 260mbps download on my laptop. Not sure if my phone is 5G or not. Its an older Galaxy S9
 

KMFJD

Lifer
Aug 11, 2005
29,043
41,727
136
RS:

only reason i ran out of data is because it's on a prepaid sim, data is amazingly cheap here in the Philippines, I know your looking at this from a strickly CDN point of view, who have probably the WORST cell network costs in the world, in large parts of the world, cell data is not that expensive and unlimited is very much an option for a reasonable price.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,194
12,025
126
www.anyf.ca
Yeah we get screwed here on plans. They sometimes have "deals" where they advertise a cheap rate but it's usually only for 6 months. Back in the CDMA days you could get unlimited though and if you were grandfathered into those plans as long as you don't touch anything you get to keep it but minute you do anything like add a feature or something you lose it. Lot of people lost those plans when they shut down CDMA though. It wasn't fast but unlimited is unlimited.

I'm on a prepaid plan where it's sorta unlimited and probably one of the cheapest plans you can get here at $25, if I go over the 500MB cap it will throttle me instead of charging dollars on each MB over, so I can live with that. My home internet is unlimited so all the heavy bandwidth stuff is done there. You can also get a data-only $15 plan which I might actually use on my off grid property for telemetry data, once I build something there. You get 500MB at regular 3G speeds then after that it's dialup speed, but you don't get overcharged so to me it's better than like 1GB and then having to pay extra for each MB, which is what the main carriers do. Though looking at plans on Bell now it looks like the caps are higher now compared to last I checked when they were only single digit for same prices. You can get 25GB for $75/mo. 50GB for $95/mo is the highest. That's still not that much data though if you actually plan to use it to it's full extent. I'll stick with my $25/mo plan and just do all the heavy downloads on wifi.

What's crazy is they are provisioning massive data to all the cell towers, I don't get why they are not just letting people use it to it's full extent. They used to only use microwave but now it's mostly all fibre. So it's not like they are hurting for bandwidth and given the land line internet is unlimited they clearly can afford to provide it on cell too, all goes through the same pipe on Front St (I assume) where they have to pay for it.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,194
12,025
126
www.anyf.ca
Wow that's an insane deal. At that price you can just get rid of home internet altogether and setup a 5G modem. Even if you have 2 services it's still cheaper. Even DSL and dialup costs more than that here.
 
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GregGreen

Golden Member
Dec 5, 2000
1,681
3
81
What are you doing on your phone that those speeds really matter though? I do all that stuff on the computer. With data caps it's not like you can push heavy data transfers for very long.

Race to sleep is huge for getting more life out of the battery. The less time the phone is communicating with the tower, the better.

We've got 5G UC coverage on T-Mobile where we live. Shit is blazing fast, pushing 250-300Mbps

I've been seeing 700-1200mbps around here on 5G UC and 100-200 on regular 5G. I don't hate it.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,194
12,025
126
www.anyf.ca
That's more than the max they offer for fibre here. :eek: You'd pay through the nose if you actually used that kind of bandwidth though. The very thought of having a deal like the one shown in another post is pretty much a pipe dream here.
 

MtnMan

Diamond Member
Jul 27, 2004
8,722
7,824
136
Sitting on a bench outside a tire shop waiting on my car.

First test is with 4G, second is 5G. Have yet to be impressed with 5G.

4G 4g.jpg

5G 5g.jpg