When buying a phone...

Mal79

Mal79

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Should we consider getting a 5G version in 2022?
 
I was surprised when I visited my parents in JeffreysBay recently to see that most of the town has 5G. (MTN). I thought only the major cities had 5G.

Anyway, really up to you. It's not like 4G will be switched off soon, even 3G is still going :thumbsup:
 
I am fine with 3g/4g speeds at the moment,

5g is really fast and I wont be using it properly. So if I was looking, It wouldnt be on the top of the checklist
 
blaaislaai said:
I rarely use mobile data, if I do, it's set to the lowest possible speed (2G currently ) to save on battery.
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2G won't save on battery, it will take longer to download/upload.
The only saving there is possibly due to frequency bands, lower bands would be better if you're in a poor signal area, if signal strength is good enough for both, LTE will probably be the most power efficient as it's the fastest race to sleep for the phone.

For 5G, that only applies to the Snapdragon 865 (think 2020 models), disabling it there will be a power improvement as it's separate, anything after that or if 765 won't make a real difference.

Mal79 said:
Should we consider getting a 5G version in 2022?
Click to expand...
Question is more how long are you planning to keep your phone?

If the price difference is small enough, I'd go for the 5G option (I did here), if often in e.g. CBD, I'd get it as well due to multiplexing, 5G is way more energy efficient per Mbps (up to 100x), so we'll probably see more packages that will be geared towards it.

I am still expecting that at one point there will be 5G only packages since it will be cheaper for network operators to offer data there, right now it's a case of having enough spectrum free to actually offer it, it's a chicken or the egg problem.
 
backstreetboy said:
Surely you use more battery waiting for the Whatsapp image, email etc. to load.
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Johnatan56 said:
2G won't save on battery, it will take longer to download/upload.
The only saving there is possibly due to frequency bands, lower bands would be better if you're in a poor signal area, if signal strength is good enough for both, LTE will probably be the most power efficient as it's the fastest race to sleep for the phone.
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Actually not at all, when out in public it's solely for comms via Telegram, there's probably a second or two delay in sending/receiving messages which I'm not fussed with.
Browsing, email and such I only do from Home.
 
blaaislaai said:
Actually not at all, when out in public it's solely for comms via Telegram, there's probably a second or two delay in sending/receiving messages which I'm not fussed with.
Browsing, email and such I only do from Home.
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Yeah, no, it won't save battery, 4G has lower latency and a lot of power optimization that 2G/3G doesn't have. You could maybe argue 2G vs 3G (I can't remember the exact details there anymore, been a while since I last wrote an exam on it), but you'll definitely use less battery on 4G than 2G even if you are just having Android doing checks for e-mail, Telegram, etc. in the background.
 
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