Ask HN: Why are there no 5G USB-C dongles for laptops? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why are there no 5G USB-C dongles for laptops?

51 pointsreacharavindh74 comments

I was deciding between a Macbook Air and framework laptop. I thought one way I can justify buying a Framework over MBA(and give up stellar battery life, proper sleep/instant wakeup function etc) is if it could be had with 5G connectivity that would allow me to use the laptop even while I''m on the train without drining my phone battery for a hotspot.

But, to my surprise, I could not find any 5G dongles that are cheap and available to buy easily... I found one on an Austrian website intended for IOT uses coming at a price almost as that of a laptop.https://www.fts-hennig.at/netztechnik/router/mobilfunkrouter/hocell-5g-dongle-m210.html

What am I missing? If my phone could have 5G and even my watch could have 5G for cheap, why not a laptop?

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GSM dongles simply aren't that popular anymore.

Wifi access is near-universal, so the average consumer will pretty much never be without internet access - and their phone is a pretty suitable backup hotspot.

The people who do need GSM-based internet - like surveyors or door-to-door people - are probably better served by tablets anyways, and definitely don't want to deal with a USB dongle. If they have to, they'll just get a laptop with a M.2 GSM card. Whatever remains probably doesn't need 5G speeds to begin with.

So yeah, it's a tiny market. Expect them to be expensive. There's a 5G USB dongle made by Apal available for €400, but that's about it.

Are you sure 4G won't be enough? You can get one of those for €50 or so.

> and their phone is a pretty suitable backup hotspot.

This one. When your phone can almost always act as a hotspot, you don't need a separate one.

And for tourists it's much easier to get a 5G/WiFi hotspot at the airport for the duration of the trip.

> The people who do need GSM-based internet - like surveyors or door-to-door people - are probably better served by tablets anyways, and definitely don't want to deal with a USB dongle. If they have to, they'll just get a laptop with a M.2 GSM card.

Laptops in the space commonly have either built-in WWAN or a BTO option. I'm pretty sure you can get at least 4G on every Toughbook.

I had a toshiva with 4G, back before 5G days, it was really neat.

I'm slightly surprised by this since IME public wifi is pretty bad, not to mention covered in all sorts of click through login walls, so where 4G is available and I'm not in a known good location, I prefer that.

I do think 5G has been slightly miss-sold. Its main benefit is using the higher frequencies which have shorter effective range, so a busy location like a railway station that has thousands of people in can more effectively split them into microcells. But in most cases a "5G" phone is going to be using 4G infrastructure for a long time.

>Wifi access is near-universal, so the average consumer will pretty much never be without internet access - and their phone is a pretty suitable backup hotspot.

For my last couple week urban European trip I decided to just see how I could get by with WiFi (and downloaded maps etc.) and rely on my AT&T pay by day only used as a backup. The answer was, yes, the various WiFi logins on trains etc. trying to extract marketing info from you ranged from mildly annoying to unusable. But, at the end of the day, there were only a few days I actually needed 5G.

Though with the trend towards multiple eSIMs it's probably increasingly easy to just use one of those--although the major carriers have generally improved their international packages so it may not even be worth the trouble.

Considering that 5G is newer than 4G and all the carriers upgrading to pack their users into 5G, I thought it would be future-prood to get there instead of using 4G. Other than that, I dont really _need_ 5G for bandwidth or anything. I'll check out the 4G options then!

5G and 4G are supposed to be able to share spectrum in a more selective way; not sure if it actually happens, but a combo 4g/5g base station runs a single control channel for both, and assigns slots as either 4g or 5g. 2g/3g needed to have a whole block of spectrum assigned.

Doesn't mean 4g will never be turned off, but it makes it easier to keep it on.

You don't need to use WiFi to share an internet connection - it should be possible to tether your phone via cable and you can definitely share the connection via Bluetooth too. If your operating system vendor doesn't support this, please send them a support email inquiring as to why.

> via Bluetooth too

Wouldn't recommend, bluetooth has the disadvantage of being very slow.

i wrongly assumed BT5 would be ok sharing a 3G connection recently... oh how wrong i was. BT is pure garbage.

after seeing the abysmal bandwidth i understood why every headphone becomes garbage when you start using the microphone channel.

there's no hope for BT and it must go on favor of anything else from this century.

> i understood why every headphone becomes garbage when you start using the microphone channel

AFAIK, this is a codec issue, with most codecs not supporting bidirectional audio. IIRC, newer Bluetooth revisions tackle this.

USB2 speeds are better, but not that much.

USB2 has a cap of 480mbps (includes overhead) while Bluetooth is stuck at several megabits per second (1.7 for Bluetooth 4, should be around double for Bluetooth 5).

WiFi can easily beat USB2 but Bluetooth certainly can't.

USB2 can do 480mbit (connection at least) and has the advantage of working properly even in a noisy wifi area.

We're in 2023 though. I get about 1.6Gbps over my phone's CDC-NCM interface in iperf over USB 3.0.

> without drining my phone battery for a hotspot

I faced a similar problem. I have now invested my money in an external battery instead to charge my phone if necessary. For me, this seemed like a simpler solution (also, I don't have to worry about a second SIM this way).

For iPhones, there are now batteries that do not even need cables.

https://www.anker.com/products/a1611

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MJWY3AM/A/magsafe-battery...

I was disappointed with how little charge the Anker 622 holds.

They advertise the 633 to hold 1.3 charges for an iPhone 13.

The 622, at half the capacity would only extend battery life by ~60% (not even one charge which is a big bummer)

Interestingly the 633 is priced at $79.99 in the US, and €79.99 in EU. The EU price is therefore equivalent to about $88.30.

On top of that, they currently have a $10 discount voucher in the US. https://www.anker.com/products/a1641?ref=select_your_product...

Whereas the EU does not get any discount currently https://www.anker.com/eu-en/products/a1641?variant=415101967...

So that’s $69.99 for the US vs $88.30 for the EU, for the same product.

The difference is more than explained by VAT.

> They advertise the 633 to hold 1.3 charges for an iPhone 13.

I think you have a typo there. The product page for 633 says 1.8 charges for the iPhone 13.

I was confused why 60% extra would seem low for half capacity of 1.3 charges (130%). Dividing 130% by two gives 65%.

But since it’s actually 180%, I agree that 60% extra seems low. Should have been about 90% extra one would think.

You’re right, it’s 180% and I guess extra 90% for the 622, which makes Apple’s offering a bit ridiculous IMO (60% additional charge for double the price of the 622)

AFAIK, the USB internet dongles went out of fashion. Now people usually use hotspot from phone or you can use USB tethering if you dont want to make your phone hotspot.

It's also annoying how hard it is to find good 5G enterprise modems. We have remote test sites, as well as backup internet for offices that are currently on 4G that I want to upgrade to 5G but it's hard to find. All I want is a 5G modem with an Ethernet port that will go to our existing routers. A lot of what I've found so far either has a lot of surplus features (routing, WiFi, etc.) which I will probably have to just disable everything on (Peplink looks decent and is in this category as far as I've looked, but I'm having trouble finding their gear for sale in my country), or has become "cloud managed" nonsense. Cradlepoint, for example make really nice hardware but now you have no option to use their "cloud management" stuff which I absolutely don't want or need, so I will not buy any of their gear. Just give me a web UI, it's not too hard...

don't forget the firmware quality.

google had to warn all pixel users recently to turn off modem because of a remote full control exploit on the cheap modem they used! it was the first late update to make it even more fun to pixel customers.

Very true. One of the sites I’ve inherited has an OEM branded unit that I can find for sale, but not find any manufacturer page or any new firmware. It’s been there for four or so years… Who knows what vulnerabilities havent been addressed… It’s pretty high on the list for replacement.

You can order laptops with 5G WWAN card built-in or just insert one later, every business laptop brand like Lenovo (Thinkpad), Dell or HP allow them.

From my own experience the problem with USB dongle (used ZTE USB) is that they are inconvenient in the move - dedicated SIM card, sticking out of the port, easy to get lost. Drivers are stability and security nightmare too.

Next problem is that 5G/4G need to meet some local frequency usage restrictions thus the devices need to differ between countries/regions. The market is too small to invest in separate certification, sales and distribution. The same applies to smartphones but the market is bigger and the issue is handled well already.

Good question. Not sure why it’s like this. Perhaps wifi is ubiquitous enough that most people don’t care…?

My preferred solution: I carry a small 4g router (TP-Link M7350) in my backpack. Extremely useful when working in places that lack wifi (e.g. some coffee shops etc). The battery lasts very long.

Probably a combination of (relative) WiFi ubiquity, the ability to use a phone as a hotspot in many cases, and as soon as you're using cellular on a different device you're talking about a subscription of some sort. I don't use cellular other than on my phone enough to even activate cellular on a couple of other devices of mine that have a cellular modem.

Use your phone as a hotspot, while plugged in to charge.

Even better, USB tethering -- no Wi-Fi needed. At least on Android, it's very easy to enable.

It's also a lifesaver when Wi-Fi drivers are unavailable on Linux, as you can use USB tethering, and use your phone as a USB Wi-Fi dongle.

That kills my MBP’s battery, as it would be charging my phone as well.

Interesting point, true.

These days you can control the charge direction from Android, that may work. On my phone, I can also use Acc (and AccA) to limit charge current/voltage, and possibly stop charging (I have to check whether it cuts the connection). Advanced charging controller requires root, though.

You can buy a cheap portable 5G to Wifi router. That way, you also don't need to pollute your OS with sketchy dongle drivers.

I think most people with this particular need would prefer a portable hotspot, like the Netgear Nighthawk M5, but they are not cheap as you've found, any 5g android phone can be used in it's place, and so it probably a better alternative in many cases.

Since you're talking about USB, and battery drain, you can probably assume that the phone will use roughly the extra power that is required to do the 5G data transmission and relay to the USB host, and so, if you connect your phone to your computer via USB, and enable internet sharing via USB, you've achieved USB dongle behaviour ?

With MacBooks it's very seamless to connect to your iPhone's hotspot, it just appears in the WiFi menu. It's definitely more convenient than a dongle, as long as you have your phone with you

The seams start to appear when you phone battery is depleted

So you carry an external battery pack. The Magsafe ones for more recent iPhones are nice in that you don't even need to deal with a cable.

The laptop is an external battery pack…

In which case you connect it via USB, like you would with the dongle

Connecting your phone with via USB is exactly where the 'seamless' part falls apart. The comparison to dongle is also wrong, I don't use dongle for anything else, so I don't care if its not mobile

> without drining my phone battery for a hotspot.

I wonder how much power 5G in a moving train needs. The point being that you'd just drain the laptop's battery faster *.

Do you even get 5G in that train or a 4G dongle would be as good?

Must it be usb-c or usb-a plus short adapter will do?

As everyone else said, the convenience of a hotspot plus not having to manage/pay for a separate cell phone subscription outweighs the battery drain for most, so no one gets dongles any more.

Edit: * maybe as fast as powering a cell phone from it...

Acer has 2 options but they start 299.

Alternatively, you can look into mobile 5g modems/routers with battery. They're also in the same price range though plus you have to charge them.

You mentioned Austria so I assume you're in the EU?

Geizhals ist usually you're best bet for product and price discovery.

https://geizhals.eu/?cat=phonmdg&xf=4844_5G~5694_USB&sort=p&...

The 5g modem itself is expensive due to (I assume) licensing. Just look at the difference between a 5g iPad or not: $200 and the watch which is $100.

It's not just the part itself but its context. You are asking for engineering to spend time figuring out how to integrate that into a current (potentially hyper-optimized) design, supply chain management, lawers, etc.

Additionally, in terms of alternatives, phones almost universally tether, you can buy specific 5g devices that you can fit in your palm.

You can buy a phone battery for $30 and run your phone all day no matter how hot you are running your phone.

It's expensive and complex to implement and there are plenty of good enough easily attainable alternatives, I'm not sure why a company would implement a niche product like that.

A lot of laptops have a built in 5G modem, or just a slot and antennas for a 5G card that user can install if needed.

https://www.delltechnologies.com/asset/en-us/products/laptop...

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/latitude-5440-l...

Yes, I was hoping for a way to get the Framework laptop to do this.. Dell doing this as an integrated solution doesnt quite help me. But, it is good to know such a thing exists.

I'm not sure about the "a lot" part... I've never seen it before

All the business series laptops offer it as an option.

Acer has one: https://www.acer.com/de-de/predator/accessories/connected-de...

I’ve been looking for the same to no avail. I’d buy one for my MacBook in an instant but the only things available in Germany are bulky hotspot devices with built-in batteries for 300-700€.

I use my phone with an external battery charging it (20800mAh power bank). It's cheaper and more useful to have a power bank than having a dedicated device for hotspot, the same battery can charge my phone, my computer and power any other USB device I might need.

I'm almost sure this is the main reason for these dongles to not really have a market. A phone already provides the same functionality, the battery drain on a laptop would be pretty similar (since the modem on a phone is very well optimised) so extra power through a charger/external battery would be needed anyway if the main issue is draining the phone's battery, it'd just shift to draining the computer's battery.

I think most people who need this just buy laptops with the module preinstalled. Every major laptop or tablet brand I know has LTE options available.

The framework community designs for a swappable dongle are nice but they're not exactly complete. The cheapest way I can think of is to grab one of those M.2 boards, put them into a small M.2 to USB C converter and print a case around that. Most affordable M.2 modules seem to be 4G only though.

Portable 5G hotspots do exist, but they certainly are not cheap. I think some of them might be tethered.

There is still premium for these products so the prices are high.

There seem to be plenty on Amazon just not USB-C, which is a shame for the manufacturers who don't include USB-A sockets any more :(

WiFi dongles are worth considering even though the wifi is a potential bottleneck. In most travel situations you are more interested in stability than max speed and having a WiFi dongle allows you to position it away from the laptop, in a window or high up to pick up marginal 5G signals.

Not sure if it was just a USB-A thing. I couldnt find any 5G -> USB-A dongles either.

Previously a lot of carrier would lock down the ability to share a phone's internet connection. This was the main reason cellular hotspot devices existed. Nowadays people just use their phone are we're all better off. Would be great if Framework released a module for it though, it's slightly more convenient that connecting through your phone.

The community has been working on an expansion card to add LTE connectivity to the Framework: https://community.frame.work/t/lte-cat-4-cell-modem-card. Looks like they're still in the early prototyping phase though.

I have a sense that once Apple figures out their own 5G/Wifi modem silicon, they will offer 5g connectivity from MacBooks within a 2-3 years of deploying it across the iPhone range. I also anticipate they'd offer their own data plans similar to how they do with the 5G iPad

"My" Google pointed me to a 5G USB dongle:

https://rpishop.cz/iot-karty/5753-waveshare-5g-dongle.html

But look at that heat-sink! The thing looks very big and very power-hungry.

> without drining my phone battery for a hotspot

I recently started using my android phone as USB hotspot to connect my desktop PC to the internet. It's great. Cable connection is way better than over wifi dongle in my pc which was unstable. And the phone is charging at the same time.

>If it could be had with 5G connectivity that would allow me to use the laptop even while I''m on the train without drining my phone battery for a hotspot.

You can charge your phone off the laptop. Or get an external battery bank.

There’s one from ZTE. It’s a little pricey but can be ordered from Amazon. https://www.amazon.de/dp/B07VKNKKW4/

Cell phones are good enough. Very few users want to shell out for dedicated device and a monthly 5G plan for it when phone hotspots cover almost all cases.

In your case, a cheap battery pack would be a much better alternative.

https://circleid.com/posts/20230127-the-disappointment-of-5g

You may buy a separated $100 android phone with 5G and use it as hotspot

This doesn’t solve OPs problem, but I wonder if you could build a dongle yourself with a RPI and hardware for interacting with the SIM card.

Amazon has a few USB-A dongles available; no USB-C though.

Not really.

The challenging part is connecting to the cellular network, and you'd still need a separate module for that. In the end you'd end up with what is essentially a dongle connected to the RPI[0], so you don't really gain anything from it.

[0]: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-5g-hat

Its an infrastructure thing...

Do you remember the last USA telephony network to go bankrupt with that idea? Hint it starts with a C, mid late 1990s. Came with laptops pre-installed in fact.

Lenovo laptops have them, those network modem in them

Googling "usb 5g sim" returned quite a few options

you are missing a country with competitive import rules.

chinese sites have dozen of 5g dongles you can buy for under $100.

also, i think 4G has better battery usage anyway.

Your phone can tether via USB

Dongle? What is this, 2010?

Well, if Apple or Framework integrated a 5G modem in a computer(not an ipad, but one with real keyboard, mouse and a desktop OS), I wouldnt need to even ask this question :-(

But it's such a rare use case for most people. I understand you though, but I guess the real answer is that there's just no demand for it. For those sitting in a coffee shop with shoddy WiFi, you can just hotspot with your phone. If you're at home you'll have WiFi to your fiber (or to your wall mounted 5G access point even).

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