[arcticbull]

I think it's driven by network utilization on the carrier side and battery life on the device manufacturer side. Your monthly 1GB (let's say) usage cap at EDGE speeds translates to around 5 hours of constant connection. At 4G speeds (40Mbps typical for me) that's just 3.41 minutes. If we can get that to 10X for 5G, that's just 20 seconds.

Over the last decade we've gone from using 5 hours of data per subscriber to less than 4 minutes, and potentially down to 20 seconds. Similarly, latency went from 400ms ping to 5ms.

This improves network performance, since the tower is more likely to be available when you need it, and faster too, even if the average throughput and backhaul link remains unchanged. It also improves battery life because the battery is primarily draining during active comm sessions. Get them in faster, serve them faster and back to sleep faster.

Think of it in terms of Apple's MacBook. The finite resource here is more complex as it's both thermal and power. The CPU tops out at an average of 1.3GHz but it has an instantaneous turbo-boost to 3.2GHz. You could say that 1.3GHz is pretty fast and gets the job done, if it represents the same TDP, why bother going faster? The answer is it improves your experience (lower latency on bursty workloads). It also improves your battery life because it's more efficient to spend 1/3 the time at 3.2GHz and 2/3 the time sleeping than the whole time at 1.3GHz. I think Apple described it as "racing to get back to sleep."

Obviously this breaks down with sustained workloads, though I'd argue the same is true of 5G.

[jackvalentine]

Okay sure, but what can you _do_ with that extra throughput is what OP is asking.

You're making the classic IT-guy failure of talking about the technical feature rather than the user outcome (I have had to train myself out of this in recent years so I'm not having a go at you).

[AaronFriel]

I'm confused, he's talking about the user outcome - improved battery life while consuming content. The technical reason is that the modem spends less time active for the same amount of bandwidth.

[ledzep2]

Cell on my phone contributes like less than 10% of total battery consumption. The most goes to screen and cpu. So there's limited improvement for 5G in this. But for IoT devices in which comms use most of the battery, this could be significant. However, it's debatable whether spending on billions of dollars on a regional 5g network is an optimal solution for a more durable IoT infrastructure. In my understanding, there should be a more economical way to build an efficient IoT infrastructure since most of them don't need that much data speed.

[SeanAppleby]

I agree with your point on power consumption and agree that probably doesn't warrant the investment.

I don't work on cellular infrastructure, and don't even work on IoT anymore, but I could imagine that as far as IoT infrastructure is concerned, it might not be that any specific devices need a large amount of throughput to provide their services, but that the aggregate of a potentially very larger number of devices needing access to data services could test the throughput of the collective infrastructure, and redesigning that infrastructure to be able to have more throughput could be key, not to a future with some magical usecase of some specific types of devices, but to a future with a much larger number of simple networked devices working in concert to make the world more efficient in the aggregate.

That said, is the timing right? I don't know. It does kind of seem like it is driven more by politics than technical necessity.

[hanspeter]

If given that most people charge their phone once a day and doesn't actually need more battery efficiency, and battery efficiency is the only benefit, are there then no actual benefit from 5G?

[arcticbull]

Unless one day you could charge your phone once every two days? Or once a week! Like back in the day of the 3310, which had 22 hours of talk time and 31 days of standby. Or you could make the phone smaller/lighter/faster with the extra efficiency. I'm having trouble believing someone here on HN is arguing against improving technology.

I sometimes forget to plug my phone in, maybe after traveling, maybe after drinking haha. I'm already super glad my phone will make it through a second day. Back in the iPhone 3G days? Not so much.

[thatcat]

Smaller/lighter/faster phones and battery banks are already available, without 5g. Why do you need 5g specifically? It's value has to exceed the value it destroys. Not all tech developments are net improvements.

[arcticbull]

Because they'll be even smaller/lighter/faster. That's what efficiency gets you. 5G is more efficient. There's really nothing else to say.

[thatcat]

That's a technical feature. The user outcome is fuzzy because you don't know really how weather prediction interference and increased RFI will play out for users.

[arcticbull]

Those are externalities unrelated to the phone or experience with it. I'm confident if 5G is widely deployed and it causes the stated problems we'll find a new way to predict the weather.

[thatcat]

Do you study atmospheric analysis? Weather prediction is not great currently and the weather is getting more volatile.

Why should someone be allowed to implement a design at scale without testing and solving the downstream problems first? That's not how engineering works.

[jackvalentine]

Okay I have 10% extra battery life - what can I do with that I’m not already doing?

Extra battery life is a feature, not an outcome.

[arcticbull]

The outcome is your phone lasts longer. And your experience with it improves as the network is more available when you need it.

[jackvalentine]

My phone lasts longer and that lets me _____

Nobody is wandering around wanting their phone to last longer purely for that sake.

[AaronFriel]

Lets you use your phone for longer between charges. You're acting like battery life isn't a user feature, but it is: companies advertise heavily on it, and it can often be a differentiator between midrange and premium phones.

You're looking for a user story where only looking at the corollary makes it obvious that battery life enables everything else.

Suppose you shipped a phone with 99% less battery life than its competitors. You could, at trivial expense, increase your 1% to 10%, your engineers propose how to do so.

You reply, "My phone lasts longer and that lets me _____".

To which your engineers reply, "Use your phone?"

[renaudg]

The fact that the almost exact same conversations happened with the advent of broadband, mobile data, 3G, 3G+, 4G should give you a hint.

[jackvalentine]

Perhaps you could just come out and say it?

[arcticbull]

We did. Many times. Each time there's a generational shift in wireless technology some people come out and say it's good enough, we're done here, nothing new to make, why do you bother with all this effort. Then we do. And life improves, our experience with technology improves, and we get used to it. Then the cycle repeats itself.

Grab an iPhone 3G and use it for a few days. That's what going back from 5G to 4G will be 5 years from now. Just as it is going back from 4G to 3G today. You've just gotten used to how good things are.

[jackvalentine]

I see you're getting frustrated with me because I'm not willing to accept that because it happened in the past, it will always happen in the future.

I just set my phone to 3G, where I'm getting a speed test of 15mbps about 1/10th what I get on 4G typically.

Everything seems to work the same way it did on 4G. Actually I'm surprised by that because I thought 4G had been a bigger improvement.

[simonh]

Demand for wireless broadband services isn’t static, it’s rapidly growing. It’s not just that 5G will let us do things 4G can’t. It’s that it will let us do the same things but a lot more of it, before the networks become too congested and demand outstrips supply.

[jackvalentine]

You are the first person to actually nail it - well done!

That's a sale-able outcome: more and more people are using the spectrum so if we don't upgrade to a more efficient use then the outcomes you currently enjoy (video chat, gaming, virtual desktops whatever it is you do and value) will stop working because of the traffic.

[agumonkey]

> a lot more of it

avidity I say

[gsich]

Like what?

[arcticbull]

The same thing you do now but more efficient.

[jackvalentine]

Define efficient? Nothing I currently do now reaches the limits of even half of my current connection.

[arcticbull]

From a power and network utilization perspective. It feels like you're not really trying.

[jackvalentine]

So I'm using the network more efficiently... how does that improve my life?