Wife and I are still rocking the OG Pixel 1, but battery life is starting to become an issue. Is now a good time to upgrade to a 5g phone, or should we hang on for another couple months?

Here's a map of where 5G is in the world.
https://www.speedtest.net/ookla-5g-map

5G may take longer to deploy than LTE did. The issue with 5G is it's a very high frequency, so it can't penetrate walls very well. It's basically Wi-Fi. So the cell companies have to make small nodes all over the cities. The benefit of the hardware is it doesn't need to be in a giant tower, the nodes can be mounted like little wifi routers on traffic lights or on buildings, but getting all of those nodes wired up and mounted will probably take more time to do. Even more challenging in rural areas.

Since it's like Wi-Fi and as fast as Fiber internet, all of the cell companies see an opportunity to transform into home internet. Verizon started doing this in Houston. They plant a tower in the middle of a suburb and then all of the houses in that radius get 5G Home Internet without the internet provider having to wire up each house. They just give you a box and boom, you've got 1000 Mbps home internet. If this succeeds, that may help boost 5G infrastructure as the companies see the cost benefits of not having to lay cable everywhere.

Not until they deploy sub 6Ghz 5G will it be all that worth while on a phone.

Also 5G NR is nothing like wifi, its alot more complicated than that.

5g will be deployed on at least two different bands in the US. Fixed will be on 60ghz,. mm wave. Mobile on 4 GHz. And carriers will be running more fiber then ever. Most vzw deployments I have seen have a node for about every 10 houses. All fiber connected. Mobile currently requires dense site placement and high power. And phones have 4-8 antennas and drivers and get hot to the point of being impossible to hold. 5g is not what most people believe it is. Waiting to buy a viable phone for 5g is going to be a long wait.

Verizon is using 28 and 39Ghz spectrum they bought from XO years ago. They are a long ways away from 60Ghz, 3-4 yrs. They will deploy sub 6 5G on reharvested 3G spectrum or CBRS. I don't know any US carrier using 4 Ghz for 4G or 5G, that spectrum has not even been allocated that I could tell.

http://niviuk.free.fr/nr_band.php

Pman17 said:

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Pixel 4 Comes out Next Month, wait till november for that

5G is way too early right now. Only works in a few cities and you have to be downtown. Fall 2020 is when it will start to pick up but even then, 5G will be in most major cities. Really wouldn't need a 5G phone till 2021 and probably will be a normal thing like LTE is now till 2025.

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Google has shown that they like to screw early adopters of their phones. Wait a month and it will be close to half price on black friday or some other ridiculous package offered.

A lot of people I know and including me are having issues with battery drain on Pixels. My understanding is that the current version of Google Play Services is to blame. Apparently you can side load the previous version, but I have not tried it to verify if it works or not.

I may look at Samsung this time around. I'm not a fan of the leaked info on the Pixel 4 (if it's valid info anyways). The S10 looks like a solid platform.

As for plans, I'm on Verizon and it looks like the new data plans are a lot better than what I have right now anyways. It will suck to have to finance two phones after several months of phone bills without that line item, but it is what it is these days since changing batteries is a *****.

I keep seeing people talk about getting 5G phones and I'm just not sure I understand the desire right now.

The videos I've watched where folks review them basically say you have to standing really close to the relatively few nodes that are out there in relatively few cities that they're testing in to get the speeds expected.

It reminds me of when cable internet was rolling out and only the houses within a few blocks of the cable company actually had access.

I don't need 5g right now but if it's coming in a year or two why not have a device that is capable of it's the same price as one that can't?

I guess I just feel like a year or two is very optimistic and my guess is by the time it gets here, some of the battery/heat issues may have been resolved leading to folks wanting new phones then anyhow.

That said, if you're a "buy and keep" type of phone person, I agree with what you're saying.

When we switch away from wired up houses to this, will the latency increase for gaming and such? Or will it be a negligible difference?

HossAg said:

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When we switch away from wired up houses to this, will the latency increase for gaming and such? Or will it be a negligible difference?

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I think it will be negligible. It'll be as good as connecting your console to wifi. Half the time I play Xbox on LTE and get around 140 ping which is fine, I don't see much of a difference in multiplayer compared to home internet. Above 200 ping, stuff starts to lag and rubber band. 5G is supposed to improve latency so I'd say 5G would get 50 ping or less which is pretty close to average home internet.

Pman17 said:

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HossAg said:

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When we switch away from wired up houses to this, will the latency increase for gaming and such? Or will it be a negligible difference?

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I think it will be negligible. It'll be as good as connecting your console to wifi. Half the time I play Xbox on LTE and get around 140 ping which is fine, I don't see much of a difference in multiplayer compared to home internet. Above 200 ping, stuff starts to lag and rubber band. 5G is supposed to improve latency so I'd say 5G would get 50 ping or less which is pretty close to average home internet.

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My house (rural College Station) has 100% LTE based internet. I get between 25-50ms ping speed on speedtest.net most of the time. I've seen as low as 15ms. Games are slower due to the distance to the servers.

I've heard that 5G should be like fiber in terms of latency. Speed Tests close to the server should be 1ms or less.
I know someone working for AT&T with their 5G deployment. He says that when it is done you will be able to watch a football game in stadium in real time on your phone. It shouldn't be any different than the live steam going through the stadium TV's.

Cromagnum said:

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I don't need 5g right now but if it's coming in a year or two why not have a device that is capable of it's the same price as one that can't?

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Because the first generation or two of phones are usually crap when a new wireless standard comes out.

Also, they cost a couple hundred dollars more.

Pman17 said:

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Here's a map of where 5G is in the world.
https://www.speedtest.net/ookla-5g-map

5G may take longer to deploy than LTE did. The issue with 5G is it's a very high frequency, so it can't penetrate walls very well. It's basically Wi-Fi. So the cell companies have to make small nodes all over the cities. The benefit of the hardware is it doesn't need to be in a giant tower, the nodes can be mounted like little wifi routers on traffic lights or on buildings, but getting all of those nodes wired up and mounted will probably take more time to do. Even more challenging in rural areas.

Since it's like Wi-Fi and as fast as Fiber internet, all of the cell companies see an opportunity to transform into home internet. Verizon started doing this in Houston. They plant a tower in the middle of a suburb and then all of the houses in that radius get 5G Home Internet without the internet provider having to wire up each house. They just give you a box and boom, you've got 1000 Mbps home internet. If this succeeds, that may help boost 5G infrastructure as the companies see the cost benefits of not having to lay cable everywhere.

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At 60 GHz, I bought that it will penetrate walls at all. It needs to have more than a clear line of sight between the radios -- it needs a clear fresnel zone.

From what I understand, the maximum usable distance is about 0.4 miles. Also, if it is raining, the signal is absorbed by the rain and doesn't get through at all. The biggest issue is trees and other foilage.

I see no reason to buy into the hype yet, especially literally.

Anything over 70 is pretty rough for FPS games, so hopefully it stays below that. Having one provider for phone service and home internet will be nice, though.