Pros And Cons On The New 5G Phones

Originally on Sprint, now T-Mobile. I have an S8 Active. I really just need it for work calls and texts. But since at work, I am driving about town all day in a few different cities around me where I live. So I am constantly changing cell tower reception throughout the day. I find in some areas my phone still showing 3G. So I have to assume that in those areas I just won’t have coverage. Because I can’t imagine that if I don’t have LTE in these areas that all of a sudden I will have 5G.
 
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The Pro of 5G phones is that it makes us immortal. :rofl: JOKING


The con of 5G phones is battery life, the pro is speed; literally faster than what your cable company provides. Almost up to par with fiber optic speeds, but don't expect any miracles on the upload speeds
 
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How much download speed is really needed on a cell phone today? The OS isn't installed that way, and even if it was it's not all that big compared to Windows. Apps are generally relatively small as well. Streaming a movie works very well on 4G and maybe even 3G, don't know for sure because I've never had a 3G. It's just marketing hype for the uninformed to me.
 
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sebastiantombs said:
How much download speed is really needed on a cell phone today? The OS isn't installed that way, and even if it was it's not all that big compared to Windows. Apps are generally relatively small as well. Streaming a movie works very well on 4G and maybe even 3G, don't know for sure because I've never had a 3G. It's just marketing hype for the uninformed to me.
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It can be useful people that like to upload YouTube content and cloud related “stuff” directly through their phones without connecting to a public wifi network
 
Someone just posted upload speeds aren't as high, so what's the advantage? My son and DIL both have 5G and are in the metro Philly area. Constant dropped calls, switching back and forth, constantly between 5G and 4G. My wife's iPhone 12 is on 4G out where we are in the "hinter lands" and works fine that way, until she hits a 5G tower then all bets are off. Great upload speed is meaningless if there's no connection to it. At best, to me, 5G isn't ready for prime time.
 
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sebastiantombs said:
Someone just posted upload speeds aren't as high, so what's the advantage? My son and DIL both have 5G and are in the metro Philly area. Constant dropped calls, switching back and forth, constantly between 5G and 4G. My wife's iPhone 12 is on 4G out where we are in the "hinter lands" and works fine that way, until she hits a 5G tower then all bets are off. Great upload speed is meaningless if there's no connection to it. At best, to me, 5G isn't ready for prime time.
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To really take advantage of upload/download speeds the user has to to stand right next to the cell tower, might be better reception in bigger metropolises
 
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One little known issue with the 2G and in some places 3G shutdown is that many devices that come with "free data" will no longer work. Not talking phones and tablets here. I'm talking about older Kindles that used cellular to download books from anywhere, or devices like CPAP machines that report usage data to the cloud for monitoring. Actually a lot of medical devices are in this category.

There's no reason these devices can't be replaced with 4G versions, but many people have working devices that one day (soon) will stop working. Despite warnings and notices, this will take many by surprise. This obsolescence is risk with any connected device. Protocols change and evolve. I have a tablet bought in 2014 that is supposedly LTE but the bands that gave it decent LTE speed gradually changed; the modem couldn't be updated to adapt, and now I'm lucky to get any cellular connection at all. Which reminds me I need to tell ATT to deprovision it and stop charging me $10/month for it.
 
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