OnePlus CEO tells the truth about 5G

[DrMacintosh]

With 5G seemingly over the horizon, people are onviously wanting carriers and cell phone makers to get on board with the new technology in order to push mobile data speeds further into the future......but who is going to pay for it? You of course

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Speaking through an interpreter with The Verge at the Qualcomm Snapdragon Tech Summit, Lau expects that buyers may balk at first adoption costs:

It’s hard to know because there’s a lot of specifics still to look at, but it’s likely in the neighborhood of $200-300 more.

That’s $200 to $300 more than what flagships cost this year — anywhere from $800ish for a OnePlus-type and up to $1,300 for mainstream brands like Samsung. Even with costs amoritized through monthly payment plans, we may see phones cost nearly as much as the wireless service that customers subscribe to. This could extend the life of LTE-only phones on retail shelves.

Imagine adding $300 to the cost of your favorite flagship just to have 5G Data on it for streaming Apple Music or Google Play Music or for watching a video in 480p because your carrier throttles you......

 

Not only will 5G be expensive to roll out for the next couple of years, until then there is going to be heavy switching of bands and poor roaming coverage because 5G deployment is so quadmired

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Second, since the build-out of 5G is happening across different carriers opting for different bands of spectrum, the executive says it may be difficult for customers to roam across networks. Only a few major regions, such as North America, Europe and East Asia, will be developing networks on spectrum both below 6GHz and in the millimeter wave bands. Other regions will concentrate solely on either “sub-6” or in the double-digit gigahertz range.

Leading to manufacturers of modems to have to be able to accommodate all of these bands, further increasing costs monetarily and to the phones performance when equiped with 5G

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Part of this owes to the fact that device manufacturers using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 mobile platformwill have to separately install the Snapdragon X50 modem for 5G capacity and accommodate for its needs like extended antennae and power consumption.

 

The CEO further added

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“On the product level, it’s much more complex than 4G,” Lau said, “so a significantly higher level of challenge, especially millimeter wave. It appears impossible to make a nice-looking flagship device, for now.”

So if you want 5G soon, be prepared for a poor and expensive experience for the next couple of years. 

 

Certain major playeds in thr mobile space, specifically Apple, have opted to wait until at least 2020 so they can “figure out what the hell is going on” before committing to an unproven technology. 

 

LTE is still more than enough for the vast majority of consumers imo. You don’t even need the theoretical max down speeds of LTE to have a good cellular experience and I think many carriers and phone OEMs will be happy to sit 5G out for a least a little while. 

 

Source:https://pocketnow.com/oneplus-ceo-gives-cold-truths-on-5g

 

[paddy-stone]

Yeah, I am happy to wait a few years at this point, just having purchased a new phone with a SD845, plus where I live it's not likely they will change the antennas for around that amount of time too.

[The Benjamins]

I am happy with 4G, but I am also a light data user (1-2GB a month)

 

And I want cheaper flag ships, I really like the price of the 1+6t.

[KuJoe]

New technology costs money. After it becomes more widely adopted the prices will drop down significantly, just like every new technology.

[BananaInSandals]

I've been thinking for a while. Most plans (here in Hong Kong anyways) has a cap of 5gb even if it's unlimited. After 5gb, the speed will be throttled to 128kbps or some crap. So, with 5g the network speed will be in the area of 1gb/s. 5 seconds later. BAM. You're limited to 2g speed... What's even the point of upgrading to 5g?

[DrDerp]

I get why it costs so much, but I really don’t feel like many people will benefit from this due to throttling. Why have such a high bandwidth if you’re forced to only use a small amount of it?

[BuckGup]

I still barely get 5Mb/s or service at all in places of the US. The only time I have seen speeds of 35Mb/s was major cities like Chicago. So how bout better coverage before speeds no one can use and gives you cancer and is exspensive

[Guest]

Isn't 4G different in US countries? 

I once read an article about that, they are using different types of frequencies and are much slower in general not only for throttling

But honestly, 4G plus is more than enough, why do we need 5G? Sometimes I can reach speeds of about 110Mbps in download, enough even for IoT I suppose

[Zando_]

Just now, Lukyp said:

IBut honestly, 4G plus is more than enough, why do we need 5G? Sometimes I can reach speeds of about 110Mbps in download, enough even for IoT I suppose

^^^ 4G LTE is already rated 300mbps+ and I've personally gotten 130+ down/10 up. Not really any need for anything faster if 5G has all this added risk and cost then what the heck is the point? What we really need is:

3 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

I still barely get 5Mb/s or service at all in places of the US. The only time I have seen speeds of 35Mb/s was major cities like Chicago. So how bout better coverage before speeds no one can use and gives you cancer and is exspensive

 

[Commodus]

It's basically the LTE introduction, just adjusted for inflation.

 

I remember being when the first LTE phones hit Verizon in 2011.  They really, really weren't worth the hassle.  Your total battery life (not screen-on time, total) could be measured in a few hours, and your phone was still chunky as all hell.  It wasn't until a year or more later that you started seeing LTE phones that weren't battery-hogging bricks.  And of course, the LTE network itself was far from complete, so you'd only see the benefits of your phone in a handful of cities.

 

This is why I'm not upset about having an LTE iPhone, or even that next year's iPhone will likely stick to LTE as well.  I'm all in favour of 5G, but it won't really come alive until 2020 in terms of both devices and coverage.

[Velcade]

Can't wait until phones come with 60 month loans @ 1.9% APR

[vorticalbox]

37 minutes ago, BananaInSandals said:

I've been thinking for a while. Most plans (here in Hong Kong anyways) has a cap of 5gb even if it's unlimited. After 5gb, the speed will be throttled to 128kbps or some crap. So, with 5g the network speed will be in the area of 1gb/s. 5 seconds later. BAM. You're limited to 2g speed... What's even the point of upgrading to 5g?

Beciase for a short time it's really fast! 

[Syntaxvgm]

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Imagine adding $300 to the cost of your favorite flagship just to have 5G Data on it for streaming Apple Music or Google Play Music or for watching a video in 480p because your carrier throttles you......

fucking this 4g is plenty enough with the shitty service carriers give. We're not like Taiwan or something. 4g is even enough to twitch stream from for example, if you had a stable connection with no cap. 

 

Thing is, I have 0 reason to believe installing 5g infrastructure will encourage mobile carriers to provide a an unmetered connection without targeted throttling. 
Of course, what im missing is I'm not sure how much this would help congestion in density populated areas, so maybe it helps there? Still though, 'normies' live on their phones, and a lot don't get a home internet connection or computer, so this is the thing to milk now and they're gonna milk it, just like they do with 1000$ phones on payment plans being the norm, and some things literally requiring a smart phone for no good reason. People will pay for it so they have 0 intensive to change it. 

[bcredeur97]

the biggest benefit to 5G for me is the potential to have it replace copper to the home for internet service.

Most people don't need more than 15mbit/s on their phones.. lets be honest. but a home enviornment where people have to share that, it becomes an issue.

I dont even know if 5G will be good enough for this as well. Then there's the whole cancer thing I'm not sure if I should believe or not.

[Drak3]

57 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

^^^ 4G LTE is already rated 300mbps+ and I've personally gotten 130+ down/10 up. Not really any need for anything faster if 5G has all this added risk and cost then what the heck is the point? What we really need is:

 

Aren't there LTE modems with a theoretical of 1Gbps now?

[LinusOnLine]

Where I live we can get speeds up to 340Mbit/s with 4G so I do not see a need for anything faster than that.

[79wjd]

1 hour ago, Commodus said:

It's basically the LTE introduction, just adjusted for inflation.

 

I remember being when the first LTE phones hit Verizon in 2011.  They really, really weren't worth the hassle.  Your total battery life (not screen-on time, total) could be measured in a few hours, and your phone was still chunky as all hell.  It wasn't until a year or more later that you started seeing LTE phones that weren't battery-hogging bricks.  And of course, the LTE network itself was far from complete, so you'd only see the benefits of your phone in a handful of cities.

 

This is why I'm not upset about having an LTE iPhone, or even that next year's iPhone will likely stick to LTE as well.  I'm all in favour of 5G, but it won't really come alive until 2020 in terms of both devices and coverage.

Very much so this. I got an HTC thunderbolt (Verizon's first 4g phone) right around launch and damn was it terrible. Battery life was abysmal and it was noticeably thicker than the Droid X it replaced. Plus it had a smaller battery than the X too. What a horrible time for Android.

[Mihle]

Dont really care about 5G, 4G is more than enough.

[paddy-stone]

Well the thing is, isn't 5G supposed to have better range and penetration of buildings?  and also, just because your carrier has a low cap on 4G, doesn't mean it will for 5G... I'm thinking the caps are there to stop people overloading the network all day, but with a higher bandwidth the network might not be so congested. And here in the UK at least most "caps" are between 3-20GB now, with a few being much more like 100GB, and the network "three" has an unlimited plan. They do seem to be getting better with pricing and caps on most networks now, so hopefully 5G should see even better plans, and after the initial high price entry into 5G the prices will fall on that too.

Just because something is new and you can't think "why" we are pushing it forward, doesn't mean there aren't uses for it, just look at broadband for example, when some of the bigger jumps in technology happened I saw loads of people asking why we need it, because they "got by" with dial-up for what they needed. They didn't factor in the web continuing to grow and be more useful for everyday life... I think the same will happen with 5G over time, I just don't see myself jumping on it for another year or 2 because of the early adoption price hurdles and having bought a new phone just recently. I can easily see 5G for some people being a lifeline. with better range etc, and the bandwidth this could easily be a replacement for landlines if the data caps aren't too low also... for some people even WITH a data cap it'd be better than the <1Mb internet they have right now.

We can only hope that this turns out to be the tech we know it could be, and doesn't get ruined by carriers.

[Blasteque]

Millimeter wave RF (from wikipedia):

 

"Compared to lower bands, radio waves in this band have high atmospheric attenuation: they are absorbed by the gases in the atmosphere. Therefore, they have a short range and can only be used for terrestrial communication over about a kilometer. Absorption by humidity in the atmosphere is significant except in desert environments, and attenuation by rain (rain fade) is a serious problem even over short distances..."

"Millimeter waves propagate solely by line-of-sight paths. They are not reflected by the ionosphere nor do they travel along the Earth as ground waves as lower frequency radio waves do.^[2] At typical power densities they are blocked by building walls and suffer significant attenuation passing through foliage.^[3][4][2] Absorption by atmospheric gases is a significant factor throughout the band and increases with frequency."

 

Which means even less penetration than 4G.  So, why do it?  Like most things in life, it's a compromise:

 

"However the short propagation range allows smaller frequency reuse distances than lower frequencies. The short wavelength allows modest size antennas to have a small beam width, further increasing frequency reuse potential."

 

The short range allows for more nodes (closer together) without inference, which then allows for more bandwidth and more users (if you build it out).  It's a blessing and a curse.

[BillyCool]

What we need is proper, working, full speed 4G, not 5G...

[Tenelia]

Unless 5G vastly improves on efficiency (which it doesn't), there's very little reason for national infrastructures to adopt this. I haven't read the IEEE papers on it yet, but we'll see when it's finalized.

[bbbbbbb99]

Suprise just like everything theres an early adopter tax. Simple

[Bigbootyjudy]

Who in the heck is downloading all of the Federal government's files in one minute? oh yeah, that would be that dude over there with 5tb total capacity note 14

[Phentos]

Where I live I'm not expecting 5G service any time soon. The market just isn't there for it. 

 

Bonus mention: In my home my Verizon 4G LTE network speeds average at less than 1.2Mbps while I walk down the street to my local grocery store and get ~9Mbps. The fastest I've ever seen was 14Mbps in the major shopping center in my city.