With many service providers deals available on 5G smartphones, like iPhone 13″, owners of older mobile devices may be interested in upgrading. If you’ve kept your phone for a couple of years, now might be the time to start thinking about switching to 5G. However, 5G phones can sometimes be more expensive than the alternatives, so before you take the leap, here’s how you can find out if you can even use 5G. Are not.
What are the benefits of 5G?
Before we get to where you can find a 5G signal, you need to question whether you need it or not. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? Faster speed? Who wouldn’t need that? Except for 5G, at least for now, you might not. Especially if you already have a fast wireless connection.
In the US, the major carriers have been rolling out their 4G LTE networks for over a decade. Therefore, the speed they can carry was pretty fast. In most places, the average user can pull down about 30 to 50 Mbps. This is not too far from average home internet speed. average is the key word, as both home and wireless internet connections can be very subjective. So if you’re used to getting different results, you’ll have to take your needs into account.
However, 30 to 50 Mbps is usually enough for streaming high-quality video, playing music, downloading apps, and doing most other common tasks. 5G speeds will eventually enable things like connecting every car or street sign to the internet. But it lacks the same obvious use case for your phone that you want to do but can’t yet. Game streaming from services like xCloud could benefit from 5G, but those are still new services.
Before you buy a 5G phone because it has “faster speeds,” ask if you need something for higher speeds. Do you plan on streaming the game a lot? Are you in an area where Netflix streaming doesn’t work well? (Even then, see below.) Do you often need to upload large files like videos that require the highest possible speed? If so, you can use 5G, but even then it can be a bumpy road to getting it.
Does my phone support 5G?
This question is more complicated than it seems. If your phone is marketed as a “5G” phone, it may support several versions of 5G. Although that doesn’t have to be the case, as AT&T pointed out when started using misleading “5G E” label on phones are just small improvements on 4G phones. At the time, the company had not yet rolled out its 5G network.
However, even among the phones that are accurately described as 5G — like Galaxy A32 5G, the iPhone 13″, and Pixel 6— The problem is not entirely clear. The issue is related to support for millimeter wave (mmWave). Without getting too technical, this refers to a part of the wireless spectrum that is extremely fast but doesn’t go very far and has trouble penetrating buildings. Range is so limited that in crowded city areas, support often has to be added on a block-by-block basis.
