Hacker News Reader

Comment by _bxg1 | Hacker News Reader

Except:

- It's shorter-range, so coverage will be spotty for a long time

- It doesn't go through buildings, so even the urban centers most likely to get the first towers will have spotty coverage

- It will require buying a new device, which OEMs love but the average person won't

- That device will take a hit in battery life

And all of this for ludicrously-fast new speeds on mobile devices that we'll use for... what exactly? We can already stream HD video over 4G. What experience is 5G, assuming you actually have access to it, going to improve?

I'm sure we can contrive some use-cases like streaming VR video or whatever (even though all current phone-based VR platforms have been sunsetted), but I'm extremely skeptical that it will do anything to make the average user's mobile experience better in any meaningful way.

View on HN

Your first 3 points are all based on a complete misconception of what 5G NR is. You are talking about mmWave which is an accessory component of the 5G NR standard. Low and mid-band 5G use ~ the same bands (or n71 which is the old TV band in the case of T-mobile) as LTE. Some Network Providers have been doing mmWave first because it is easier to deploy but their networks will also be mid and low band when they finish build-out.

Maybe don't make blanket statements about a standard you clearly aren't familiar with.

The term is hard to pin down when it's been diluted by things like AT&T rebranding their 4G towers as 5G towers overnight: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/att-decides-4g-is-no...

That's not new though, they also rebranded their 3G towers as 4G

There are 2 kinds of 5G, millimeter wave and non millimeter wave.

The one you are talking about is millimeter wave 5G.

The other one has pretty long range, goes through building, doesn't use up that much more battery and is overall a better technology (higher bandwidth, better congestion control and overall capacity for more connections in a crowded area, lower latency, etc.).

A sibling comment says the non-mmWave one uses the same bands as 4G, which would suggest it's not the version the OP is talking about

The 5G is pitched because greater speeds, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the millimeter waves are the reason for higher bandwidth otherwise it is similar to 4G that can peak to 1Gbps.

FR1 (the low band 5G) is capable of greater carrier aggregation and denser QAM modulation than LTE-A so it can achieve higher bandwidths than LTE-A under good conditions. It also has better latency and congestion controls which should provide a better general use experience as well as reduce degradation in heavy traffic. It also pushes more open hardware/software standards for base stations to reduce vendor lock-in.

Regarding your first point, I'm not sure if that's true, I think they use low frequency spectrum around 900MHz (just like LTE) as well, not just the 2000MHz+ to GHz spectrum in densely populated or visited places.

Also, as far as I'm concerned, the latency gains are much more interesting as the ludicrous speed, and then not even exclusively for phones and new types of apps, but for IoT as well

> What experience is 5G, assuming you actually have access to it, going to improve?

Remotely operated robotics due to the much lower latency. Think near instant reaction times while operating a drone with VR goggles, and all the implication this could have.

Also many other use cases become more feasible:

- Self driving cars with human fallbacks

- Safer car racing

- Actually smart delivery, where a single person can manage a fleet of vehicles

- Search & rescue operations ...

I'll bite, can you expand just a smidge on "safer car racing"? I'm trying to figure out how 5G enables that and failing.

Put the racers in simulators that control real race cars remotely. iRacing with more real stakes.

Yeah what @Talanes said in a sibling thread. If drivers are not physically present in the racing car then not only they're safer physically but cars could be designed without a human driver in mind (lighter, higher acceleration etc)

There's a relative to this already with first person view drone racing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZLimUDUJTA

> It will require buying a new device

all new modern phone models have 5g, what's the problem? Huawei, Xiaomi

I have great experience with 5g, it's way more faster than LTE

Only Samsung's very latest flagship release has a 5G antenna, and Apple hasn't even announced a 5G phone yet. Even if it had, the average person keeps their phone for several years, so almost nobody has a 5G device in their pocket right now.

> - That device will take a hit in battery life

4G was a real battery drain at first

Reply on news.ycombinator.com