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ElitistWhiner

macrumors member
Jul 30, 2020
36
9
Just asking. Not really sure why someone would need 5G speeds <Snip>

Dude, an iPhone 4s has been my daily driver until today. I dropped its Sim into my iPad Air to answer whether 4G sucks as bad as on my 4s. Yes, 4G did suck on the iPhone 4s. I’ll have a couple months to decide if an A14 chip would suck on 4G too.

5G on an iPhone 12 is simply another technology like Apple’s famous NFC technology. Or it could be a future proof release as Apple’s famous iPhone 4s.
 

rui no onna

Contributor
Oct 25, 2013
14,578
12,697
Dude, an iPhone 4s has been my daily driver until today. I dropped its Sim into my iPad Air to answer whether 4G sucks as bad as on my 4s. Yes, 4G did suck on the iPhone 4s. I’ll have a couple months to decide if an A14 chip would suck on 4G too.

5G on an iPhone 12 is simply another technology like Apple’s famous NFC technology. Or it could be a future proof release as Apple’s famous iPhone 4s.
The 4S does not have 4G LTE. It's only got HSPA+ or fake 4G. Kinda similar to AT&T's 5GE branding.
 
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Sticman

macrumors regular
Feb 22, 2008
107
1

Well, hold on just a minute. 5G may hold promise for the years ahead — but across most of America in 2020, a 5G phone does diddly squat. Testing 5G phones, I’ve been clocking download speeds that are roughly the same as on 4G LTE ones. And in some places, like inside my house and along the California highway, my 5G phones actually have been slower.


Yes, slower.
 

nekron99

macrumors regular
Jan 17, 2020
102
156
It’s all about the future. Think App Clips.
Asplain morely. What app clip will want to consume high bandwidth at low latency? Not challenging you, trying to stimulate ideas—legit curious.

Best I can think of is ad hoc streaming video of you interacting with a product in more areas than providers want to deploy fiber backhaul.
 
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nekron99

macrumors regular
Jan 17, 2020
102
156
A rather inane question... I remember when some people said all of the below:

a.) "Why do you need a hard drive larger than 1GB on a desktop? - Larger than 100MB on a laptop?"
b.) "Why would anyone need more memory than 128MB on their desktop? - 64MB on their laptop?"
c.) "Why would we need a computer with a processor faster than 1.3GHz?

"It's just unnecessary and wasted space/memory/power...".

Come on, man... Progress. 5 years from now - even YOU will say: "I can't believe we used to walk around with just 4G speeds on our "speedy" little smartphones... Now I'm GLAD I have 9G connectivity on my iPhone 34 (or Galaxy Note 62...).
I didn’t take that as the spirit of the question—rather “what makes you excited/hopeful for”
 

hunapu

macrumors member
Oct 31, 2019
38
76
I/we don't need 5g.
Producers of everything from coffee machines to cars need it to put our devices on the internet and collect diagnostics and user data, to sell to highest bidder
 

The-Real-Deal82

macrumors P6
Jan 17, 2013
16,480
24,242
Wales, United Kingdom
I’d be more than happy to have an iPhone 12 which is 5G capable on a 4G plan. I certainly don’t want to be charged extra for something I’m not overly bothered about. It’s definitely something I will discuss what negotiating my next contract.
 

Hamsterhjulet

macrumors regular
Oct 1, 2015
242
245
Denmark
I'm currently using a 4G router for my home network. If 5G is that much faster it's going to be just as good as fiber internet. Where I live it's affordable to get a phone plan with unlimited data ($40 a month), so I just got the carrier to ship an extra sim-card to put in my router.
 

rumz

macrumors 65816
Feb 11, 2006
1,218
633
Utah
Dude, an iPhone 4s has been my daily driver until today. I dropped its Sim into my iPad Air to answer whether 4G sucks as bad as on my 4s. Yes, 4G did suck on the iPhone 4s. I’ll have a couple months to decide if an A14 chip would suck on 4G too.

5G on an iPhone 12 is simply another technology like Apple’s famous NFC technology. Or it could be a future proof release as Apple’s famous iPhone 4s.
Imagine using that iPhone 4S on T-Mobile 9 years ago— EDGE speeds only! (Due to not having the bands that T-Mobile used). What was that... 2g? 2.5g? Alas, it was preferable (to me) to any of the Android options at the time. Was HSDPA+ considered 4G? Still should have been much faster than EDGE at the time.
 

amaze1499

macrumors 65816
Oct 16, 2014
1,006
991
No one needs 5G. It helps sales because its new. Its a nice to have where ever it already is or might be available. If its “just faster” nobody will even bother to mention 6G whenever it’s out. Also who really needs Bluetooth 6 or mp5?
 
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jijo0068

macrumors newbie
Sep 11, 2020
3
1
Don't get me wrong, I am all for faster download speeds but I doubt 5G is going to deliver that much improvement for people living in rural areas like me, one thing I think can make a difference though is that they will use Qualcom modems which generally is better than the intel ones so I am hopeful it will improve 4G as well. I do not need 5G as where I live in Sweden it will take some time before we get any 5G and I buy a new iPhone every year anyway. If the modems are better though it can be worth it in my book but that remains to be seen.
 

0924487

Cancelled
Aug 17, 2016
2,699
2,808
5G is to leverage consumer's money to lay the infrastructure for IoT, robots and military use. It brings no benefit to phone-buyers.
 

krazzix

macrumors 6502
Jun 15, 2010
267
363
Netherlands
I don't. I used 3G up until this year. My only use cases outside the house are: Navigation, WhatsApp, Looking up some info. 3G is fine for that. I work from home 99% of the time and when I'm out I'm usually at some office or home where there is WiFi. Or I'm in the car and can't use my phone anyway.

I my mind watching videos or playing games is something you do at home anyway. When I'm out it's for meeting people for work or social reasons. That means not playing around with the phone.

One use case might be when I'm in the train. But I find that a good moment for introspection. I never even listen to music when I'm outside. Maybe I'm just old fashioned.

I only have 4G now because the price was the same and I got someone else's iPhone SE over my iPhone 5. I don't really need 4G so I most certainly won't need 5G.

I dó want a new phone however, because my iPad is dead and reading on my phone is doable, but a bigger screen and OLED would be really nice for reading. So an iPhone X will probably be fine. I'm waiting for the iPhone 12 however for the prices of used iPhones to go down :)
 
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travelsheep

macrumors 6502a
May 30, 2013
918
1,057
I buy my food mostly through delivery. Often it cooled down considerably at the time of arrival. I plan to use 5G to heat my food,
 
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Pxlkid

macrumors newbie
Aug 23, 2019
28
25
UK
Just asking. Not really sure why someone would need 5G speeds other then to see them on Ookla. What do you do on your phone that would warrant 5G over 4G LTE?
"Most" people are just checking social media, lite browsing, email and occasional streaming. Even 4K only needs 15-20mbps down if not less on a mobile device.

Where I live, I get 70-90mbps at best down on T-mobile and I am in a rural area. Typically I will get 40-50mbps when the towers are congested.
Personally I am happy to sit out 5G for a couple of years. Sometimes I dont mind being an early adopter of new tech but this roll out (in the UK) is a mess. And its super expensive. 4G for me is plenty fast enough, even when transferring large files it is often as fast as my home wifi.

If/when 5G is able to replace my home broadband for a lower cost, then I will be interested.
 

tha_man

macrumors regular
Apr 4, 2016
117
155
It will be great on large concerts or sports events, so everybody can post selfies on social networks instead of watching the event.

Other than that 99% of people that currently have decent LTE connection don’t need it. And if your current connection is crap, 5G will most probably be even worse.

On the other hand - more speed never hurts :)
 

rebretz000

macrumors 6502
Sep 29, 2018
283
318
Just asking. Not really sure why someone would need 5G speeds other then to see them on Ookla. What do you do on your phone that would warrant 5G over 4G LTE?
"Most" people are just checking social media, lite browsing, email and occasional streaming. Even 4K only needs 15-20mbps down if not less on a mobile device.

Where I live, I get 70-90mbps at best down on T-mobile and I am in a rural area. Typically I will get 40-50mbps when the towers are congested.

I’ve said this is many forums. I need T-Mobile’s low band 5G for coverage where I live. I average maybe 2 bars of service and some places I go I have no signal with LTE. My fastest download speeds are 40 mbps. With 5G I’ll get the same coverage around here I did when Verizon first rolled out their 700 MHz LTE. I really don’t care about gigabyte speeds so mmWave isn’t important to me.
 
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aleni

macrumors 68030
Jun 2, 2006
2,564
876
This is a repeated case back in 2010s. People only streamed 240p or 360p videos in their mobiles, 3G was decent, and then mobile screen went to high res, 300ppi or more, so LTE was a must in order to stream 720p or 1080p smoothly.

I think most of us don’t need 5g yet unless mobile’s screen resolution goes up to 4k and streaming 4k is common in smartphones. Maybe in 2022 when 4k smartphones are ubiquitous.
 
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