'5G makes my phone pretty worthless' | Hacker News Reader

'5G makes my phone pretty worthless'

bbc.co.uk

20 pointsasplake18 comments

>With 5G connectivity, the robot responded immediately to my commands, via an Xbox controller, for it to move. >But when we switched down to 4G, the momentary delay between me touching the controller and the robot receiving the instruction - this is called latency - resulted in drama.

This sounds like a typical smoke and mirrors demo - make the new technology dramatically better by handicapping its predecessor. A journalist whose job is to inform the public, should be a bit more critical when reporting this stuff - I believe the BBC has enough budget to not have to produce a straight-up infomercial.

> I believe the BBC has enough budget to not have to produce a straight-up infomercial.

Not sure why people have this image that BBC has a higher quality that other British tabloids.

I have the same problem (in the UK too). As soon as my phone displays 5G, there's a pretty good chance it just won't transfer any data whatsoever.

I'm curious about the exact technical reason why full 5G is unable to deliver any data but 4G is fine. Unfortunately the article doesn't seem to provide much information. Is it just buggy first generation tower software?

More likely the 5G microtowers are connected to some central "real" tower using microwave dishes, which probably get overloaded or out of alignment and just drop your packets into the ozone layer.

Is this just congested or poor reception to the limited number of base stations/towers? - there's 3200 5G base stations in the UK compared with 50K plus 4G stations.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/07/three-uks-ultr...

I think there are backhaul / core network problems on some providers…

I rely on a 5G router for my day-to-day internet connection and on the day of the royal funeral 5G throughput was atrocious (< 10kbps) yet a 4G connection with the same provider still had 100Mbps throughput

Feels like a regional and/or technical issue to me. Never had issues with 5G in Germany and I'm not aware of widespread problems here (correct me if I'm wrong). It's been fantastic with significantly better bandwidth wherever I have coverage (primarily big cities). Brief google search tells me that T-Online had 64k 5G base stations here in 2020.

From the above article:

> And there is another issue.

> "We are using something called non-standalone 5G, which is the very first version of 5G," Mr Wood said.

> "It only delivers the 5G signal from the handset to the tower. Everything behind that is still 4G.

That can't be the issue. We're doing the same thing here.

I have the same problem. I just turned off 5g on my phone.

Looks like I may be in the minority, but I've had nothing but good experience in the month or so I've had a 5G phone (Samsung S22, Three network, mostly in and around Oxford, UK). There is a 5G mast visible in the distance, and I consistently get 500-800Mbs down and 20-50Mbs up at home. Similar story when out and about if there is a 5G signal (occasionally download goes down to ~5Mbs). It's better than the ~400Mbs my Virginmedia home line maxes out at.

It’s unfortunate that marketers are killing what 5G is supposed to mean.

If you aren’t using the 30 GHz band and getting 1.5 gbps download speed, it’s not a surprise that the experience feels exactly the same as 4G.

> it’s not a surprise that the experience feels exactly the same as 4G

This is not what the article is about. It's about 5G being non-functional and actually worse than 4G.

> using the 30 GHz band and getting 1.5 gbps download speed

I'm in a major American city that's absolutely saturated with 5G, and under the conditions you describe, my phone essentially doesn't work (similar experience to the article).

5G is a disaster so far.

When testing out my new 5G phone, I was able to download a sample large data file at speeds rivaling or exceeding my wired ISP!

But other times, 5G my connection nearly stops, despite my phone showing decent signal strength. I've learned those signal strength bars aren't to be trusted at all. 5G frequencies are more impeded by walls and obstacles and have a shorter range than their predecessors. Also more 5G phones are added every day and the providers may not be adding backend 5G capacity quickly enough to keep up, so the 5G network could just be swamped.

So every now and then when I encounter issues I switch my phone back to 4G mode and it works just fine.

My phone displays 5G all the time, but I have no idea if I’m actually using 5G or not. This is because AT&T opted to cheat and display 5G even when a 4G network is in use.

I plan on dumping them soon.

Wish Apple would put the cellular spec like iPads on MacBooks as well

There is a long history of mobile network carriers taking advantage of new technology to make themselves rich at the expense of a worse customer experience.

This is kind of a predictable outcome of tearing out the cheaper, better Huawei kit.

Maybe it had to be done but it wasn't going to be easy.

>unable to share the moment on social media.

Good. Share the moment with the people next to you!

I wonder if 5G will be a step too far - it requires a huge amount of extra infrastructure to work properly, and telcos will be reluctant to invest if there's little return.

My experience with 5G has also been disappointing.

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