Apple's brawny 5G iPhone family will require larger, pricey motherboards

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  • Reply 61 of 99
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,625member
    Here's another aspect of 5G that affects handsets (although the article itself is focused on IoT).

    https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2019/9/future-network-slicing-security-iot

    My bank already has plans to use this as a security measure.
    GeorgeBMac
  • Reply 62 of 99
    philboogiephilboogie Posts: 7,675member
    AppleZulu said:
    larryjw said:
    I can’t think of a technology more expense and less useful, even in the long run, than 5G. 
    If implementation works out, 5G means much faster speeds, much lower latency, and the ability to connect vastly more devices. Downloading movies faster isn't really what 5G would be about. Once you're able to download a high-resolution movie faster than you can watch it, the extra speed doesn't really mean anything to you.

    5G is going to be about the things that haven't been invented yet. When iPhone 1 was introduced, it didn't even have GPS built in. Then they added it. Apple farmed out maps to Google at first, until they realized that Google was using location information to do more things than deliver a GPS map program. The whole abrupt Apple maps introduction/fiasco happened precisely because even Apple hadn't initially realized the full implications of putting an active GPS device in everyone's pocket. Then they realized this add-on tech was going to be a core function. Now a very few short years later, a selling point for iPhones is that Apple is more attentive about making sure you can prevent all the various sundry apps loaded on your device from using your location data without your knowledge or permission, because lots of people have thought of new and interesting ways to use location data that didn't even exist a few years ago. 

    So if 5G delivers huge bandwidth, extremely low latency, and the ability to simultaneously connect a huge number of devices, you suddenly have the ability to have lots of separate devices doing things in concert, in real time and orchestrated precisely. Thinking about those GPS maps, consider the following. Right now, if you're driving with a GPS app delivering your proposed route, you can get pretty good ETA info, and in cities that have it, you can get traffic information baked in. If a jam forms up ahead and it gets big and slow enough, your map program will offer an alternative route. Pretty cool, but it's still based on rudimentary data. There's a traffic jam on the route slowing traffic to below a certain speed range. At some threshold, the mapping app will generate an alternate route, based mostly on existing stock info on traffic lights, speed limits, etc. Also, everyone else will get the same info at the same time, causing lots of people to choose the same alternate route, creating a second traffic jam. Lather, rinse and repeat. 

    That scenario with 5G could be very different. The cars that get into the accident instantly relay that info outward. So do most of the cars that have to stop behind the accident. Alternate routes start popping up in real time. If multiple alternates are available, different cars will get different recommendations, creating optimal distributed routing around the accident, minimizing secondary traffic jams. Add an increasing percentage of self-driving cars that respond instantly to these changes, and traffic becomes a whole new experience. That's just an obvious use case. It's the stuff that few or no people have thought of yet that will be truly remarkable.

    Of course, there will also be the unintended consequences along with the sociopathic implementations that we'll also have to deal with, but there you go.
    Uhm, GPS has nothing to do with 5G. They're completely unrelated and different technologies.

  • Reply 63 of 99
    bigmikebigmike Posts: 266member
    5G has to work harder in every way (bigger parts to push the super shallow millimeter waves back and forth to link our phones and towers, batteries will drain faster, etc) to give us extra speed that we don't really need, hence it isn't worth it.

    We are going to see the new towers EVERYWHERE because the millimeter waves can't travel very far on their own. Many neighborhoods are already complaining because cities don't need a permit to come into a neighborhood and take down nice big trees everywhere – which is another thing; it's interesting that the people have no say in the matter at all. The millimeter waves can't penetrate dense materials so they have to cut down big trees and even some building structures.

    So very soon we're going to be looking at tons of metal everywhere (towers and additions to tons of poles and buildings) and we are going to be bombarded 24/7 with these heavy duty waves, which will be worse than it is already with cell and wifi signals.

    4G has been plenty fast enough for all high-def streaming needs, which most people don't even use since they're on their phone all the time.

    But, of course, the industry advertises it as "the best because it's super duper fast" and will say it doesn't harm us because they're only interested in that $$$. Most articles written about how it's not harmful is usually backed by the industry (research the details of the articles). If anyone really cares about their health, they'll talk to their local govt about not putting up 5G towers since it's a waste of taxpayer funds and not good for our health.
    edited November 2019
  • Reply 64 of 99
    GeorgeBMacGeorgeBMac Posts: 11,421member
    AppleZulu said:
    MplsP said:
    AppleZulu said:
    larryjw said:
    I can’t think of a technology more expense and less useful, even in the long run, than 5G. 
    If implementation works out, 5G means much faster speeds, much lower latency, and the ability to connect vastly more devices. Downloading movies faster isn't really what 5G would be about. Once you're able to download a high-resolution movie faster than you can watch it, the extra speed doesn't really mean anything to you.

    5G is going to be about the things that haven't been invented yet. When iPhone 1 was introduced, it didn't even have GPS built in. Then they added it. Apple farmed out maps to Google at first, until they realized that Google was using location information to do more things than deliver a GPS map program. The whole abrupt Apple maps introduction/fiasco happened precisely because even Apple hadn't initially realized the full implications of putting an active GPS device in everyone's pocket. Then they realized this add-on tech was going to be a core function. Now a very few short years later, a selling point for iPhones is that Apple is more attentive about making sure you can prevent all the various sundry apps loaded on your device aren't using your location data without your knowledge or permission, because lots of people have thought of new and interesting ways to use location data that didn't even exist a few years ago. 

    So if 5G delivers huge bandwidth, extremely low latency, and the ability to simultaneously connect a huge number of devices, you suddenly have the ability to have lots of separate devices doing things in concert, in real time and orchestrated precisely. Thinking about those GPS maps, consider the following. Right now, if you're driving with a GPS app delivering your proposed route, you can get pretty good ETA info, and in cities that have it, you can get traffic information baked in. If a jam forms up ahead and it gets big and slow enough, your map program will offer an alternative route. Pretty cool, but it's still based on rudimentary data. There's a traffic jam on the route slowing traffic to below a certain speed range. At some threshold, the mapping app will generate an alternate route, based mostly on existing stock info on traffic lights, speed limits, etc. Also, everyone else will get the same info at the same time, causing lots of people to choose the same alternate route, creating a second traffic jam. Lather, rinse and repeat. 

    That scenario with 5G could be very different. The cars that get into the accident instantly relay that info outward. So do most of the cars that have to stop behind the accident. Alternate routes start popping up in real time. If multiple alternates are available, different cars will get different recommendations, creating optimal distributed routing around the accident, minimizing secondary traffic jams. Add an increasing percentage of self-driving cars that respond instantly to these changes, and traffic becomes a whole new experience. That's just an obvious use case. It's the stuff that few or no people have thought of yet that will be truly remarkable.

    Of course, there will also be the unintended consequences along with the sociopathic implementations that we'll also have to deal with, but there you go.
    Well said and true!
    Historically major advances in communications technology have changed computing in profound and unexpected ways.  Those who judge it based on today's uses are left behind in the dust.  As you mentioned:  5G is not about downloading movies faster - although that is typically how it is portrayed and compared in the media and by those with limited vision.
    All of this may be true, but it completely ignores the fact that the vast majority applies to non-smartphone applications and there is little to nothing that requires your smartphone to have 5G capability at this point. It's interesting how the debate on this mirrors politics in the country right now - completely black and white with no room for grey. Everyone assumes that anyone who isn't 110% for 5G in every possible device as soon as humanly possible is automatically a total luddite (or an intellectual conservative) that is to myopic to see beyond dinnertime. Nowhere in my post did I say 5G shouldn't roll out. Nowhere did I say that there would never be any uses for it. Nowhere did I say smartphones should never have 5G capability. What I said is at this time (and for the near future) there are virtually no benefits to adding it to a smartphone and there are significant drawbacks. If you look at the history of tech evolution, this is abundantly clear. The rollouts always take longer than promised, the capabilities are always less than promised, and the actual uses are never what people initially envision. Look at 4G/LTE - even now we have not fully realized the promises made a decade ago. Looking at that history, the pace of the rollout so far in 2019 and the average life of a smartphone, I have absolutely no concerns about any smartphone being 'left behind' by 5G. 


    Sure, but the utility for 5G on phones doesn't emerge until it's available on phones. That's exactly the case demonstrated by my earlier reference to iPhone adding GPS as a feature. That example also demonstrated a case where Apple waited longer than they should have to realize the importance of that technology. It's quite typical for them not to get too worked up about being first with a particular feature, preferring instead to 'get it right.' Nonetheless, with GPS, they had to ditch Google in a hurry, and introduce Apple maps before it was ready, just to catch up with a rapidly growing location-based marketplace. So with 5G, they don't need to be the first ones pushing out hardware, but they can't afford to just sit on it and wait a few years to see what people do with it.

    So saying "the vast majority [of 5G utility] applies to non-smartphone applications and there is little to nothing that requires your smartphone to have 5G capability at this point" is very much an intellectually conservative stance to take on the subject. Your statement is only true so long as smartphones don't have 5G hardware. The 5G infrastructure is coming, and soon. I'm o.k that my current device doesn't have the feature, but I'd be concerned if Apple wasn't already loading it into the pipeline. GPS was added to iPhone in 2008, and Apple Maps pushed out both prematurely and way too late in 2012. The intervening four years saw the proliferation of the use of location data emerge in a decidedly non-Apple way. Apple booted google maps and rolled out Apple maps because they realized they were already way behind, and even though their own maps weren't ready, they couldn't make location services (and a privacy- and security-based implementation of it) a core part of iOS and still have Google right in the middle of it. 5G is going to be a big deal, and they can't afford to sit back for a few years to decide how they want to get into it. 

    P.S. Seriously. Smartphone tech that is already ubiquitous didn't exist thirteen years ago. Think about that. In 2007, Blackberry was the smartphone king, and served primarily a business niche market. The kids who had cellphones were texting each other using number keypads, and they were getting into trouble because their texting volume was blowing out their parents' phone plans, which had a monthly cap on the number of text messages. A kid born just before iPhones came out is just now old enough for her Bat Mitzvah. The timeline between "emerging technology" and being ubiquitous is very, very short.

    MplsP said:
    AppleZulu said:
    larryjw said:
    I can’t think of a technology more expense and less useful, even in the long run, than 5G. 
    If implementation works out, 5G means much faster speeds, much lower latency, and the ability to connect vastly more devices. Downloading movies faster isn't really what 5G would be about. Once you're able to download a high-resolution movie faster than you can watch it, the extra speed doesn't really mean anything to you.

    5G is going to be about the things that haven't been invented yet. When iPhone 1 was introduced, it didn't even have GPS built in. Then they added it. Apple farmed out maps to Google at first, until they realized that Google was using location information to do more things than deliver a GPS map program. The whole abrupt Apple maps introduction/fiasco happened precisely because even Apple hadn't initially realized the full implications of putting an active GPS device in everyone's pocket. Then they realized this add-on tech was going to be a core function. Now a very few short years later, a selling point for iPhones is that Apple is more attentive about making sure you can prevent all the various sundry apps loaded on your device aren't using your location data without your knowledge or permission, because lots of people have thought of new and interesting ways to use location data that didn't even exist a few years ago. 

    So if 5G delivers huge bandwidth, extremely low latency, and the ability to simultaneously connect a huge number of devices, you suddenly have the ability to have lots of separate devices doing things in concert, in real time and orchestrated precisely. Thinking about those GPS maps, consider the following. Right now, if you're driving with a GPS app delivering your proposed route, you can get pretty good ETA info, and in cities that have it, you can get traffic information baked in. If a jam forms up ahead and it gets big and slow enough, your map program will offer an alternative route. Pretty cool, but it's still based on rudimentary data. There's a traffic jam on the route slowing traffic to below a certain speed range. At some threshold, the mapping app will generate an alternate route, based mostly on existing stock info on traffic lights, speed limits, etc. Also, everyone else will get the same info at the same time, causing lots of people to choose the same alternate route, creating a second traffic jam. Lather, rinse and repeat. 

    That scenario with 5G could be very different. The cars that get into the accident instantly relay that info outward. So do most of the cars that have to stop behind the accident. Alternate routes start popping up in real time. If multiple alternates are available, different cars will get different recommendations, creating optimal distributed routing around the accident, minimizing secondary traffic jams. Add an increasing percentage of self-driving cars that respond instantly to these changes, and traffic becomes a whole new experience. That's just an obvious use case. It's the stuff that few or no people have thought of yet that will be truly remarkable.

    Of course, there will also be the unintended consequences along with the sociopathic implementations that we'll also have to deal with, but there you go.
    Well said and true!
    Historically major advances in communications technology have changed computing in profound and unexpected ways.  Those who judge it based on today's uses are left behind in the dust.  As you mentioned:  5G is not about downloading movies faster - although that is typically how it is portrayed and compared in the media and by those with limited vision.
    All of this may be true, but it completely ignores the fact that the vast majority applies to non-smartphone applications and there is little to nothing that requires your smartphone to have 5G capability at this point. It's interesting how the debate on this mirrors politics in the country right now - completely black and white with no room for grey. Everyone assumes that anyone who isn't 110% for 5G in every possible device as soon as humanly possible is automatically a total luddite (or an intellectual conservative) that is to myopic to see beyond dinnertime. Nowhere in my post did I say 5G shouldn't roll out. Nowhere did I say that there would never be any uses for it. Nowhere did I say smartphones should never have 5G capability. What I said is at this time (and for the near future) there are virtually no benefits to adding it to a smartphone and there are significant drawbacks. If you look at the history of tech evolution, this is abundantly clear. The rollouts always take longer than promised, the capabilities are always less than promised, and the actual uses are never what people initially envision. Look at 4G/LTE - even now we have not fully realized the promises made a decade ago. Looking at that history, the pace of the rollout so far in 2019 and the average life of a smartphone, I have absolutely no concerns about any smartphone being 'left behind' by 5G. 



    Yes, you are correct when you say [if you live in the U.S.] "there is little to nothing that requires your smartphone to have 5G capability at this point."  But then, in 2007 the iPhone didn't have much more capability than the typical flip phone "at that point".   Again, you measure tomorrow's uses based on the assumption that they will not change from today's -- and ignore AppleZulu's comprehensive debunking of that theory.
    edited November 2019 muthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 65 of 99
    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele Posts: 6,858administrator
    wozwoz said:
    I really would not want one of those towers in my neighbourhood. I measured the radiation coming out of a 4G mast opposite a shopping centre (as I walked out the shopping mall), and it was shockingly high - the highest level I have measured anywhere - and this is not something next to your body, but coming from a top a building on the other side of the street. Imagine the people exposed to this everyday, sitting in their offices, being radiated 24 x 7!?  And that was 4G.
    Good news! Nearly all of that is natural sources, motors, or other RF sources, and not wireless. Seriously, unless you actually have training in measurement, including how to use the meters and what the readings mean, don't bother. 
    AppleZuluGeorgeBMaclorin schultzmuthuk_vanalingamPickUrPoison
  • Reply 66 of 99
    AppleZuluAppleZulu Posts: 1,989member
    AppleZulu said:
    larryjw said:
    I can’t think of a technology more expense and less useful, even in the long run, than 5G. 
    If implementation works out, 5G means much faster speeds, much lower latency, and the ability to connect vastly more devices. Downloading movies faster isn't really what 5G would be about. Once you're able to download a high-resolution movie faster than you can watch it, the extra speed doesn't really mean anything to you.

    5G is going to be about the things that haven't been invented yet. When iPhone 1 was introduced, it didn't even have GPS built in. Then they added it. Apple farmed out maps to Google at first, until they realized that Google was using location information to do more things than deliver a GPS map program. The whole abrupt Apple maps introduction/fiasco happened precisely because even Apple hadn't initially realized the full implications of putting an active GPS device in everyone's pocket. Then they realized this add-on tech was going to be a core function. Now a very few short years later, a selling point for iPhones is that Apple is more attentive about making sure you can prevent all the various sundry apps loaded on your device from using your location data without your knowledge or permission, because lots of people have thought of new and interesting ways to use location data that didn't even exist a few years ago. 

    So if 5G delivers huge bandwidth, extremely low latency, and the ability to simultaneously connect a huge number of devices, you suddenly have the ability to have lots of separate devices doing things in concert, in real time and orchestrated precisely. Thinking about those GPS maps, consider the following. Right now, if you're driving with a GPS app delivering your proposed route, you can get pretty good ETA info, and in cities that have it, you can get traffic information baked in. If a jam forms up ahead and it gets big and slow enough, your map program will offer an alternative route. Pretty cool, but it's still based on rudimentary data. There's a traffic jam on the route slowing traffic to below a certain speed range. At some threshold, the mapping app will generate an alternate route, based mostly on existing stock info on traffic lights, speed limits, etc. Also, everyone else will get the same info at the same time, causing lots of people to choose the same alternate route, creating a second traffic jam. Lather, rinse and repeat. 

    That scenario with 5G could be very different. The cars that get into the accident instantly relay that info outward. So do most of the cars that have to stop behind the accident. Alternate routes start popping up in real time. If multiple alternates are available, different cars will get different recommendations, creating optimal distributed routing around the accident, minimizing secondary traffic jams. Add an increasing percentage of self-driving cars that respond instantly to these changes, and traffic becomes a whole new experience. That's just an obvious use case. It's the stuff that few or no people have thought of yet that will be truly remarkable.

    Of course, there will also be the unintended consequences along with the sociopathic implementations that we'll also have to deal with, but there you go.
    Uhm, GPS has nothing to do with 5G. They're completely unrelated and different technologies.

    Uhm, please work on your reading comprehension skills. It might prevent you from making embarrassing comments like this one.

    Yes, indeed. GPS and 5G are different technologies. Given that they are extremely likely to end up used together in the same devices, they are not, however, unrelated. Geolocation from GPS, combined with fast, low-latency communications from 5G tech creates the possibility, as in the case I describe above, of your mapping program knowing not just where you are, but also where every other car in the area is -and where they are each trying to go- all at once. This opens up the possibility of routing traffic with coordinated efficiency that is utterly impossible with the technology available at this moment. And the current tech is light years ahead of Bob's Eye-in-the-Sky Chopper on your FM radio, which was the state-of-the-art traffic info a decade ago.

    P.S. As I ponder it, 5G could add weather radar to the mix as well, projecting real-time radar data onto your map, which when combined with traffic data, could also be used to more efficiently route everyone more efficiently through and around problem areas. It could also do things like bring traffic to a stop before it gets to where a tornado is about to cut across the highway.

    P.P.S. Yes, I do know that weather radar is also a different technology than GPS and 5G. In certain implementations, however, they might not be unrelated.
    edited November 2019 GeorgeBMacmuthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 67 of 99
    thttht Posts: 5,421member
    AppleZulu said:
    Yes, indeed. GPS and 5G are different technologies. Given that they are extremely likely to end up used together in the same devices, they are not, however, unrelated. Geolocation from GPS, combined with fast, low-latency communications from 5G tech creates the possibility, as in the case I describe above, of your mapping program knowing not just where you are, but also where every other car in the area is -and where they are each trying to go- all at once. This opens up the possibility of routing traffic with coordinated efficiency that is utterly impossible with the technology available at this moment. And the current tech is light years ahead of Bob's Eye-in-the-Sky Chopper on your FM radio, which was the state-of-the-art traffic info a decade ago.
    Apple Maps, Google Maps & Waze use GPS and tower triangulation to determine the traffic. What does 5G do to improve this?

  • Reply 68 of 99
    bigmikebigmike Posts: 266member
    5G has to work harder in every way (bigger parts to push the super shallow millimeter waves to our phones from the towers) to give us extra speed that we don't really need, hence it isn't worth it.

    We are going to see the new towers EVERYWHERE because the millimeter waves can't travel very far on their own. Many neighborhoods are already complaining because cities don't need a permit to come into a neighborhood and take down nice big trees everywhere – which is another thing; it's interesting that the people have no say in the matter at all. The millimeter waves can't penetrate dense materials so they have to cut down big trees and even some building structures.

    So very soon we're going to be looking at tons of metal everywhere and we are going to be bombarded 24/7 with these heavy duty waves, which is worse than it is already.

    4G has been plenty fast enough for all high-def streaming needs, which most people don't even use since they're on their phone all the time.

    If anyone really cares about their health, they'll talk to their local govt about not putting up 5G towers since it's a waste of taxpayer funds and not good for our health.
    AI_lias
  • Reply 69 of 99
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,625member
    tht said:
    AppleZulu said:
    Yes, indeed. GPS and 5G are different technologies. Given that they are extremely likely to end up used together in the same devices, they are not, however, unrelated. Geolocation from GPS, combined with fast, low-latency communications from 5G tech creates the possibility, as in the case I describe above, of your mapping program knowing not just where you are, but also where every other car in the area is -and where they are each trying to go- all at once. This opens up the possibility of routing traffic with coordinated efficiency that is utterly impossible with the technology available at this moment. And the current tech is light years ahead of Bob's Eye-in-the-Sky Chopper on your FM radio, which was the state-of-the-art traffic info a decade ago.
    Apple Maps, Google Maps & Waze use GPS and tower triangulation to determine the traffic. What does 5G do to improve this?

    Part of 5G is designed specifically to tackle positioning:

    https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/industry-articles/how-will-5g-networks-improve-location-awareness/
    GeorgeBMac
  • Reply 70 of 99
    AppleZuluAppleZulu Posts: 1,989member
    tht said:
    AppleZulu said:
    Yes, indeed. GPS and 5G are different technologies. Given that they are extremely likely to end up used together in the same devices, they are not, however, unrelated. Geolocation from GPS, combined with fast, low-latency communications from 5G tech creates the possibility, as in the case I describe above, of your mapping program knowing not just where you are, but also where every other car in the area is -and where they are each trying to go- all at once. This opens up the possibility of routing traffic with coordinated efficiency that is utterly impossible with the technology available at this moment. And the current tech is light years ahead of Bob's Eye-in-the-Sky Chopper on your FM radio, which was the state-of-the-art traffic info a decade ago.
    Apple Maps, Google Maps & Waze use GPS and tower triangulation to determine the traffic. What does 5G do to improve this?

    In the scenario I'm imagining, 5G would enable the use of actual real-time GPS data from every car reporting in. It could also make it possible to use data on direction, speed, all or part of data on intended destination, etc. This raises the usual privacy implications that would have to be dealt with appropriately, but the idea is that, because 5G can connect to large numbers of devices with high speed and low latency, it would be possible to make available traffic data granularity that is only hinted at by things like tower triangulation and periodic pings from GPS.

    The current system can be used to paint areas on your map with colors that estimate ranges of speed on the route. In my experience, the speed indicators are reasonably accurate within the fairly wide-range categories, but it's definitely not anywhere near real-time. It's pretty common to end up in a slowdown long before the yellow or red pops up on the map, or alternatively, to zip right through an area where the traffic info on the map is a echo of an earlier slowdown that has been resolved. 

    All this is a speculation on my part of a possible implementation of 5G tech. This is in service of the main point, which is that saying "there is no use for 5G" is unimaginative and short-sighted.
    muthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 71 of 99
    thttht Posts: 5,421member
    avon b7 said:
    tht said:
    AppleZulu said:
    Yes, indeed. GPS and 5G are different technologies. Given that they are extremely likely to end up used together in the same devices, they are not, however, unrelated. Geolocation from GPS, combined with fast, low-latency communications from 5G tech creates the possibility, as in the case I describe above, of your mapping program knowing not just where you are, but also where every other car in the area is -and where they are each trying to go- all at once. This opens up the possibility of routing traffic with coordinated efficiency that is utterly impossible with the technology available at this moment. And the current tech is light years ahead of Bob's Eye-in-the-Sky Chopper on your FM radio, which was the state-of-the-art traffic info a decade ago.
    Apple Maps, Google Maps & Waze use GPS and tower triangulation to determine the traffic. What does 5G do to improve this?

    Part of 5G is designed specifically to tackle positioning:

    https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/industry-articles/how-will-5g-networks-improve-location-awareness/
    The link doesn’t say anything about improving traffic awareness and mapping for driving. It states that indoor navigation would be improved, for large indoor places that don’t have GPS access. If GPS is available in an indoor location, I don’t think it would be much of an improvement at all.

    Then, it lists 5G is there to support emergent technologies such as UAVs, factory trolleys, and autonomous driving (they are basically all autonomous vehicle related). It makes an unsubstantiated claim that users want more bandwidth as well. I don’t think mass market users want more bandwidth any more. Users want more data, and more data to be available in more places, yes. 5G doesn’t do any thing to really address that unless real unlimited service packages will come with a 5G plan.
  • Reply 72 of 99
    AppleZuluAppleZulu Posts: 1,989member
    tht said:
    avon b7 said:
    tht said:
    AppleZulu said:
    Yes, indeed. GPS and 5G are different technologies. Given that they are extremely likely to end up used together in the same devices, they are not, however, unrelated. Geolocation from GPS, combined with fast, low-latency communications from 5G tech creates the possibility, as in the case I describe above, of your mapping program knowing not just where you are, but also where every other car in the area is -and where they are each trying to go- all at once. This opens up the possibility of routing traffic with coordinated efficiency that is utterly impossible with the technology available at this moment. And the current tech is light years ahead of Bob's Eye-in-the-Sky Chopper on your FM radio, which was the state-of-the-art traffic info a decade ago.
    Apple Maps, Google Maps & Waze use GPS and tower triangulation to determine the traffic. What does 5G do to improve this?

    Part of 5G is designed specifically to tackle positioning:

    https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/industry-articles/how-will-5g-networks-improve-location-awareness/
    The link doesn’t say anything about improving traffic awareness and mapping for driving. It states that indoor navigation would be improved, for large indoor places that don’t have GPS access. If GPS is available in an indoor location, I don’t think it would be much of an improvement at all.

    Then, it lists 5G is there to support emergent technologies such as UAVs, factory trolleys, and autonomous driving (they are basically all autonomous vehicle related). It makes an unsubstantiated claim that users want more bandwidth as well. I don’t think mass market users want more bandwidth any more. Users want more data, and more data to be available in more places, yes. 5G doesn’t do any thing to really address that unless real unlimited service packages will come with a 5G plan.
    How hard is this to understand? Why do people assess emerging tech by wrapping the limitations of the current paradigm around it? As the technology makes more bandwidth available, new high bandwidth use cases are created, and mass market users will want those new uses. Consumer service packages follow suit, tracking somewhere between charging what they can get away with for it and providing users with ever-increasing sizes for data packages.

    When iPhone 1 came out, data plans were a secondary consideration for cell phone contracts. Cellular data was expensive and brutally slow, and most internet activity was expected to happen via WiFi. Cellular calling plans were still capped in minutes for "long distance" calling, and imposed hefty "roaming" charges if you used your phone outside of a relatively small home area, or even by wandering outside your provider's coverage and getting picked up by a different company's cell tower. By that measure, nobody would want cellular broadband, and even using the phone as a phone was an expensive proposition if you weren't careful about who you called and where you were when you placed the call. Using your logic under that paradigm, there wasn't much case for cellular broadband at all, and the utility of smartphones was pretty limited, too. 

    Then the App Store, 3G, 4G and LTE happened. There are no more long-distance charges or counting minutes on the phone, or counting text messages, and cellular data packages are measured in tens or hundreds of gigabytes. WiFi is nice, but with a decent data plan, you don't have to think about it much. 

    Looking at 5G only in the context of current data and phone plan limitations is entirely unimaginative. That's really not how any of this works.
    edited November 2019 GeorgeBMacmuthuk_vanalingamGG1
  • Reply 73 of 99
    GeorgeBMacGeorgeBMac Posts: 11,421member
    avon b7 said:
    Here's another aspect of 5G that affects handsets (although the article itself is focused on IoT).

    https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2019/9/future-network-slicing-security-iot

    My bank already has plans to use this as a security measure.
    Very interesting.   I knew about slicing but had not thought much about that application of it.

    It is where a country with significant government control and oversight could really make 5G sing and contribute to society as part of its infrastructure.   Conversely, we in the U.S. are stuck with the theory that all government is bad and the private, for-profit model is the goal and the model.  I suspect that Verizon will only implement slicing in ways that improve its bottom line.
  • Reply 74 of 99
    AppleZulu said:
    larryjw said:
    I can’t think of a technology more expense and less useful, even in the long run, than 5G. 
    If implementation works out, 5G means much faster speeds, much lower latency, and the ability to connect vastly more devices. Downloading movies faster isn't really what 5G would be about. Once you're able to download a high-resolution movie faster than you can watch it, the extra speed doesn't really mean anything to you.

    5G is going to be about the things that haven't been invented yet. When iPhone 1 was introduced, it didn't even have GPS built in. Then they added it. Apple farmed out maps to Google at first, until they realized that Google was using location information to do more things than deliver a GPS map program. The whole abrupt Apple maps introduction/fiasco happened precisely because even Apple hadn't initially realized the full implications of putting an active GPS device in everyone's pocket. Then they realized this add-on tech was going to be a core function. Now a very few short years later, a selling point for iPhones is that Apple is more attentive about making sure you can prevent all the various sundry apps loaded on your device from using your location data without your knowledge or permission, because lots of people have thought of new and interesting ways to use location data that didn't even exist a few years ago. 

    So if 5G delivers huge bandwidth, extremely low latency, and the ability to simultaneously connect a huge number of devices, you suddenly have the ability to have lots of separate devices doing things in concert, in real time and orchestrated precisely. Thinking about those GPS maps, consider the following. Right now, if you're driving with a GPS app delivering your proposed route, you can get pretty good ETA info, and in cities that have it, you can get traffic information baked in. If a jam forms up ahead and it gets big and slow enough, your map program will offer an alternative route. Pretty cool, but it's still based on rudimentary data. There's a traffic jam on the route slowing traffic to below a certain speed range. At some threshold, the mapping app will generate an alternate route, based mostly on existing stock info on traffic lights, speed limits, etc. Also, everyone else will get the same info at the same time, causing lots of people to choose the same alternate route, creating a second traffic jam. Lather, rinse and repeat. 

    That scenario with 5G could be very different. The cars that get into the accident instantly relay that info outward. So do most of the cars that have to stop behind the accident. Alternate routes start popping up in real time. If multiple alternates are available, different cars will get different recommendations, creating optimal distributed routing around the accident, minimizing secondary traffic jams. Add an increasing percentage of self-driving cars that respond instantly to these changes, and traffic becomes a whole new experience. That's just an obvious use case. It's the stuff that few or no people have thought of yet that will be truly remarkable.

    Of course, there will also be the unintended consequences along with the sociopathic implementations that we'll also have to deal with, but there you go.
    Uhm, GPS has nothing to do with 5G. They're completely unrelated and different technologies.

    You missed the point, Phil. GPS was just presented as an example of how implementation of new technologies can have unexpected (and unintended) outcomes. AZ then expanded on the example by illustrating how GPS may benefit from 5G.
    muthuk_vanalingamGeorgeBMac
  • Reply 75 of 99
    MplsPMplsP Posts: 3,911member
    AppleZulu said:
    MplsP said:
    AppleZulu said:
    larryjw said:
    I can’t think of a technology more expense and less useful, even in the long run, than 5G. 
    If implementation works out, 5G means much faster speeds, much lower latency, and the ability to connect vastly more devices. Downloading movies faster isn't really what 5G would be about. Once you're able to download a high-resolution movie faster than you can watch it, the extra speed doesn't really mean anything to you.

    5G is going to be about the things that haven't been invented yet. When iPhone 1 was introduced, it didn't even have GPS built in. Then they added it. Apple farmed out maps to Google at first, until they realized that Google was using location information to do more things than deliver a GPS map program. The whole abrupt Apple maps introduction/fiasco happened precisely because even Apple hadn't initially realized the full implications of putting an active GPS device in everyone's pocket. Then they realized this add-on tech was going to be a core function. Now a very few short years later, a selling point for iPhones is that Apple is more attentive about making sure you can prevent all the various sundry apps loaded on your device aren't using your location data without your knowledge or permission, because lots of people have thought of new and interesting ways to use location data that didn't even exist a few years ago. 

    So if 5G delivers huge bandwidth, extremely low latency, and the ability to simultaneously connect a huge number of devices, you suddenly have the ability to have lots of separate devices doing things in concert, in real time and orchestrated precisely. Thinking about those GPS maps, consider the following. Right now, if you're driving with a GPS app delivering your proposed route, you can get pretty good ETA info, and in cities that have it, you can get traffic information baked in. If a jam forms up ahead and it gets big and slow enough, your map program will offer an alternative route. Pretty cool, but it's still based on rudimentary data. There's a traffic jam on the route slowing traffic to below a certain speed range. At some threshold, the mapping app will generate an alternate route, based mostly on existing stock info on traffic lights, speed limits, etc. Also, everyone else will get the same info at the same time, causing lots of people to choose the same alternate route, creating a second traffic jam. Lather, rinse and repeat. 

    That scenario with 5G could be very different. The cars that get into the accident instantly relay that info outward. So do most of the cars that have to stop behind the accident. Alternate routes start popping up in real time. If multiple alternates are available, different cars will get different recommendations, creating optimal distributed routing around the accident, minimizing secondary traffic jams. Add an increasing percentage of self-driving cars that respond instantly to these changes, and traffic becomes a whole new experience. That's just an obvious use case. It's the stuff that few or no people have thought of yet that will be truly remarkable.

    Of course, there will also be the unintended consequences along with the sociopathic implementations that we'll also have to deal with, but there you go.
    Well said and true!
    Historically major advances in communications technology have changed computing in profound and unexpected ways.  Those who judge it based on today's uses are left behind in the dust.  As you mentioned:  5G is not about downloading movies faster - although that is typically how it is portrayed and compared in the media and by those with limited vision.
    All of this may be true, but it completely ignores the fact that the vast majority applies to non-smartphone applications and there is little to nothing that requires your smartphone to have 5G capability at this point. It's interesting how the debate on this mirrors politics in the country right now - completely black and white with no room for grey. Everyone assumes that anyone who isn't 110% for 5G in every possible device as soon as humanly possible is automatically a total luddite (or an intellectual conservative) that is to myopic to see beyond dinnertime. Nowhere in my post did I say 5G shouldn't roll out. Nowhere did I say that there would never be any uses for it. Nowhere did I say smartphones should never have 5G capability. What I said is at this time (and for the near future) there are virtually no benefits to adding it to a smartphone and there are significant drawbacks. If you look at the history of tech evolution, this is abundantly clear. The rollouts always take longer than promised, the capabilities are always less than promised, and the actual uses are never what people initially envision. Look at 4G/LTE - even now we have not fully realized the promises made a decade ago. Looking at that history, the pace of the rollout so far in 2019 and the average life of a smartphone, I have absolutely no concerns about any smartphone being 'left behind' by 5G. 


    Sure, but the utility for 5G on phones doesn't emerge until it's available on phones. That's exactly the case demonstrated by my earlier reference to iPhone adding GPS as a feature. That example also demonstrated a case where Apple waited longer than they should have to realize the importance of that technology. It's quite typical for them not to get too worked up about being first with a particular feature, preferring instead to 'get it right.' Nonetheless, with GPS, they had to ditch Google in a hurry, and introduce Apple maps before it was ready, just to catch up with a rapidly growing location-based marketplace. So with 5G, they don't need to be the first ones pushing out hardware, but they can't afford to just sit on it and wait a few years to see what people do with it.

    So saying "the vast majority [of 5G utility] applies to non-smartphone applications and there is little to nothing that requires your smartphone to have 5G capability at this point" is very much an intellectually conservative stance to take on the subject. Your statement is only true so long as smartphones don't have 5G hardware. The 5G infrastructure is coming, and soon. I'm o.k that my current device doesn't have the feature, but I'd be concerned if Apple wasn't already loading it into the pipeline. GPS was added to iPhone in 2008, and Apple Maps pushed out both prematurely and way too late in 2012. The intervening four years saw the proliferation of the use of location data emerge in a decidedly non-Apple way. Apple booted google maps and rolled out Apple maps because they realized they were already way behind, and even though their own maps weren't ready, they couldn't make location services (and a privacy- and security-based implementation of it) a core part of iOS and still have Google right in the middle of it. 5G is going to be a big deal, and they can't afford to sit back for a few years to decide how they want to get into it. 

    P.S. Seriously. Smartphone tech that is already ubiquitous didn't exist thirteen years ago. Think about that. In 2007, Blackberry was the smartphone king, and served primarily a business niche market. The kids who had cellphones were texting each other using number keypads, and they were getting into trouble because their texting volume was blowing out their parents' phone plans, which had a monthly cap on the number of text messages. A kid born just before iPhones came out is just now old enough for her Bat Mitzvah. The timeline between "emerging technology" and being ubiquitous is very, very short.

    MplsP said:
    AppleZulu said:
    larryjw said:
    I can’t think of a technology more expense and less useful, even in the long run, than 5G. 
    If implementation works out, 5G means much faster speeds, much lower latency, and the ability to connect vastly more devices. Downloading movies faster isn't really what 5G would be about. Once you're able to download a high-resolution movie faster than you can watch it, the extra speed doesn't really mean anything to you.

    5G is going to be about the things that haven't been invented yet. When iPhone 1 was introduced, it didn't even have GPS built in. Then they added it. Apple farmed out maps to Google at first, until they realized that Google was using location information to do more things than deliver a GPS map program. The whole abrupt Apple maps introduction/fiasco happened precisely because even Apple hadn't initially realized the full implications of putting an active GPS device in everyone's pocket. Then they realized this add-on tech was going to be a core function. Now a very few short years later, a selling point for iPhones is that Apple is more attentive about making sure you can prevent all the various sundry apps loaded on your device aren't using your location data without your knowledge or permission, because lots of people have thought of new and interesting ways to use location data that didn't even exist a few years ago. 

    So if 5G delivers huge bandwidth, extremely low latency, and the ability to simultaneously connect a huge number of devices, you suddenly have the ability to have lots of separate devices doing things in concert, in real time and orchestrated precisely. Thinking about those GPS maps, consider the following. Right now, if you're driving with a GPS app delivering your proposed route, you can get pretty good ETA info, and in cities that have it, you can get traffic information baked in. If a jam forms up ahead and it gets big and slow enough, your map program will offer an alternative route. Pretty cool, but it's still based on rudimentary data. There's a traffic jam on the route slowing traffic to below a certain speed range. At some threshold, the mapping app will generate an alternate route, based mostly on existing stock info on traffic lights, speed limits, etc. Also, everyone else will get the same info at the same time, causing lots of people to choose the same alternate route, creating a second traffic jam. Lather, rinse and repeat. 

    That scenario with 5G could be very different. The cars that get into the accident instantly relay that info outward. So do most of the cars that have to stop behind the accident. Alternate routes start popping up in real time. If multiple alternates are available, different cars will get different recommendations, creating optimal distributed routing around the accident, minimizing secondary traffic jams. Add an increasing percentage of self-driving cars that respond instantly to these changes, and traffic becomes a whole new experience. That's just an obvious use case. It's the stuff that few or no people have thought of yet that will be truly remarkable.

    Of course, there will also be the unintended consequences along with the sociopathic implementations that we'll also have to deal with, but there you go.
    Well said and true!
    Historically major advances in communications technology have changed computing in profound and unexpected ways.  Those who judge it based on today's uses are left behind in the dust.  As you mentioned:  5G is not about downloading movies faster - although that is typically how it is portrayed and compared in the media and by those with limited vision.
    All of this may be true, but it completely ignores the fact that the vast majority applies to non-smartphone applications and there is little to nothing that requires your smartphone to have 5G capability at this point. It's interesting how the debate on this mirrors politics in the country right now - completely black and white with no room for grey. Everyone assumes that anyone who isn't 110% for 5G in every possible device as soon as humanly possible is automatically a total luddite (or an intellectual conservative) that is to myopic to see beyond dinnertime. Nowhere in my post did I say 5G shouldn't roll out. Nowhere did I say that there would never be any uses for it. Nowhere did I say smartphones should never have 5G capability. What I said is at this time (and for the near future) there are virtually no benefits to adding it to a smartphone and there are significant drawbacks. If you look at the history of tech evolution, this is abundantly clear. The rollouts always take longer than promised, the capabilities are always less than promised, and the actual uses are never what people initially envision. Look at 4G/LTE - even now we have not fully realized the promises made a decade ago. Looking at that history, the pace of the rollout so far in 2019 and the average life of a smartphone, I have absolutely no concerns about any smartphone being 'left behind' by 5G. 



    Yes, you are correct when you say [if you live in the U.S.] "there is little to nothing that requires your smartphone to have 5G capability at this point."  But then, in 2007 the iPhone didn't have much more capability than the typical flip phone "at that point".   Again, you measure tomorrow's uses based on the assumption that they will not change from today's -- and ignore AppleZulu's comprehensive debunking of that theory.
    I did nothing of the sort. Rather you are extrapolating my argument further than it was intended and creating straw man arguments. Again, in bold, just to help you read:

    Nowhere in my post did I say 5G shouldn't roll out. Nowhere did I say that there would never be any uses for it. Nowhere did I say smartphones should never have 5G capability. What I said is at this time (and for the near future) there are virtually no benefits to adding it to a smartphone and there are significant drawbacks. 

    To use your argument about the 2007 iPhone, whether the 2007 iPhone had 3G capability or not played no roll in the development and roll out of 3G tech. We are a bit in a catch22 with 5G - there is virtually no 5G availability in the US (availability in other countries is really of no consequence to me.) There are virtually no phones that use 5G and thus virtually no one to use it. Until it's even modestly available, the main demand will be from technophiles wanting the latest capabilities. Until there's a critical mass, there will be precious little new uses for it. After such uses arise, the time frame for important/critical new uses of the technology is likely 3-5 years beyond that. All that brings us back to my argument for today - unless you are an early adopter that has no problem paying $$$ for cutting edge technology that has very little practical use it makes no sense to buy a 5G phone right now. Save your money and wait a few years. The technology will mature and improve, prices will come down, availability will increase and you can actually decide if any of these fabulous new, undiscovered uses actually matter to you.

    I'll also point out (again) that much of the 5G rollout involves improvements to the infrastructure backbone of the network and all users will benefit, whether they have 5G or not.
  • Reply 76 of 99
    thttht Posts: 5,421member
    AppleZulu said:
    How hard is this to understand? Why do people assess emerging tech by wrapping the limitations of the current paradigm around it? As the technology makes more bandwidth available, new high bandwidth use cases are created, and mass market users will want those new uses. Consumer service packages follow suit, tracking somewhere between charging what they can get away with for it and providing users with ever-increasing sizes for data packages.
    It’s very easy to understand, but we’ve been through the rounds of the next big thing before. AI, VR, AR, IoT, heck, even 3D TV. There are a lot of big industry trends that come and then fizzle. The sturm and drang over VR and AR was pretty big when Google, Facebook, and MS came out with solutions for them, but not Apple to their doom about 3 to 4 years ago, and they have become sideshows or niches now.

    We’ve asked what is the big feature of 5G, and basically every answer involves solutions not involving smartphones - the putative point of this thread with 5G on iPhones - or rather limited use cases, or the answer involves a “to be invented feature” that everyone will want, but we just don’t know now. If it is good, you should be able to outline a case or feature that is really desirable and can’t be done today. What will get people to upgrade? What is the feature selling it to consumers?

    For the original iPhone, being able to browse the web was a huge desirable future. That was a huge blow away feature, and having fast Internet access was a big part of that. Nobody was confused about this and people paid the extra money for it. People got service plans at basically 2x the cost they were paying before at the time. That ride ended about 4 years ago maybe when LTE matured, devices got fast enough, displays got big enough. I haven’t desired faster bandwidth on my 6S Plus much at all. More data and better signal strength in more places? Most certainly. But 5G isn’t addressing that.


    MplsPGG1
  • Reply 77 of 99
    "According to Kuo's predictions, the new design will help improve supplier revenue and profitability, and could help increase shipments to 85 million units in 2020, 10 million more than the 75 million reckoned to happen in 2019."

    Increase shipments of what to 85 million units in 2020?

    I expect to see shipments of 200 million+ iPhones in 2020.
  • Reply 78 of 99
    thttht Posts: 5,421member
    DCJ0001 said:
    "According to Kuo's predictions, the new design will help improve supplier revenue and profitability, and could help increase shipments to 85 million units in 2020, 10 million more than the 75 million reckoned to happen in 2019."

    Increase shipments of what to 85 million units in 2020?

    I expect to see shipments of 200 million+ iPhones in 2020.
    It’s not clear, but they are talking about the Fall or Holiday quarter, the first full quarter of sales for the 2020 iPhones. 

    Who knows if he’ll be right.
  • Reply 79 of 99
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,625member
    tht said:
    avon b7 said:
    tht said:
    AppleZulu said:
    Yes, indeed. GPS and 5G are different technologies. Given that they are extremely likely to end up used together in the same devices, they are not, however, unrelated. Geolocation from GPS, combined with fast, low-latency communications from 5G tech creates the possibility, as in the case I describe above, of your mapping program knowing not just where you are, but also where every other car in the area is -and where they are each trying to go- all at once. This opens up the possibility of routing traffic with coordinated efficiency that is utterly impossible with the technology available at this moment. And the current tech is light years ahead of Bob's Eye-in-the-Sky Chopper on your FM radio, which was the state-of-the-art traffic info a decade ago.
    Apple Maps, Google Maps & Waze use GPS and tower triangulation to determine the traffic. What does 5G do to improve this?

    Part of 5G is designed specifically to tackle positioning:

    https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/industry-articles/how-will-5g-networks-improve-location-awareness/
    The link doesn’t say anything about improving traffic awareness and mapping for driving. It states that indoor navigation would be improved, for large indoor places that don’t have GPS access. If GPS is available in an indoor location, I don’t think it would be much of an improvement at all.

    Then, it lists 5G is there to support emergent technologies such as UAVs, factory trolleys, and autonomous driving (they are basically all autonomous vehicle related). It makes an unsubstantiated claim that users want more bandwidth as well. I don’t think mass market users want more bandwidth any more. Users want more data, and more data to be available in more places, yes. 5G doesn’t do any thing to really address that unless real unlimited service packages will come with a 5G plan.
    5G will place an extra layer of positioning information on top of what we already have. Currently traffic awareness and mapping use the technology that is already available.

    As the new technology comes online, it will be incorporated too and can only enhance what we already have. 

    Given that 5G also allows for massive amounts of devices to be managed at very low latencies, all kinds of new opportunities will arise. Opportunities that simply aren't possible now.

    Tying 5G into what is currently available will only serve to enhance hybrid systems of positioning, just like dual frequency GPS phones do now.

    The possibilities are huge. That is from the perspective of 5G positioning technology alone. On top of that there is also a plan to use V2X (vehicle to everything) over 5G which, when standards are agreed, will allow pedestrians, infrastructure and vehicles to be 'aware' of each other. 


    GeorgeBMac
  • Reply 80 of 99
    GeorgeBMacGeorgeBMac Posts: 11,421member
    MplsP said:
    AppleZulu said:
    MplsP said:
    AppleZulu said:
    larryjw said:
    I can’t think of a technology more expense and less useful, even in the long run, than 5G. 
    If implementation works out, 5G means much faster speeds, much lower latency, and the ability to connect vastly more devices. Downloading movies faster isn't really what 5G would be about. Once you're able to download a high-resolution movie faster than you can watch it, the extra speed doesn't really mean anything to you.

    5G is going to be about the things that haven't been invented yet. When iPhone 1 was introduced, it didn't even have GPS built in. Then they added it. Apple farmed out maps to Google at first, until they realized that Google was using location information to do more things than deliver a GPS map program. The whole abrupt Apple maps introduction/fiasco happened precisely because even Apple hadn't initially realized the full implications of putting an active GPS device in everyone's pocket. Then they realized this add-on tech was going to be a core function. Now a very few short years later, a selling point for iPhones is that Apple is more attentive about making sure you can prevent all the various sundry apps loaded on your device aren't using your location data without your knowledge or permission, because lots of people have thought of new and interesting ways to use location data that didn't even exist a few years ago. 

    So if 5G delivers huge bandwidth, extremely low latency, and the ability to simultaneously connect a huge number of devices, you suddenly have the ability to have lots of separate devices doing things in concert, in real time and orchestrated precisely. Thinking about those GPS maps, consider the following. Right now, if you're driving with a GPS app delivering your proposed route, you can get pretty good ETA info, and in cities that have it, you can get traffic information baked in. If a jam forms up ahead and it gets big and slow enough, your map program will offer an alternative route. Pretty cool, but it's still based on rudimentary data. There's a traffic jam on the route slowing traffic to below a certain speed range. At some threshold, the mapping app will generate an alternate route, based mostly on existing stock info on traffic lights, speed limits, etc. Also, everyone else will get the same info at the same time, causing lots of people to choose the same alternate route, creating a second traffic jam. Lather, rinse and repeat. 

    That scenario with 5G could be very different. The cars that get into the accident instantly relay that info outward. So do most of the cars that have to stop behind the accident. Alternate routes start popping up in real time. If multiple alternates are available, different cars will get different recommendations, creating optimal distributed routing around the accident, minimizing secondary traffic jams. Add an increasing percentage of self-driving cars that respond instantly to these changes, and traffic becomes a whole new experience. That's just an obvious use case. It's the stuff that few or no people have thought of yet that will be truly remarkable.

    Of course, there will also be the unintended consequences along with the sociopathic implementations that we'll also have to deal with, but there you go.
    Well said and true!
    Historically major advances in communications technology have changed computing in profound and unexpected ways.  Those who judge it based on today's uses are left behind in the dust.  As you mentioned:  5G is not about downloading movies faster - although that is typically how it is portrayed and compared in the media and by those with limited vision.
    All of this may be true, but it completely ignores the fact that the vast majority applies to non-smartphone applications and there is little to nothing that requires your smartphone to have 5G capability at this point. It's interesting how the debate on this mirrors politics in the country right now - completely black and white with no room for grey. Everyone assumes that anyone who isn't 110% for 5G in every possible device as soon as humanly possible is automatically a total luddite (or an intellectual conservative) that is to myopic to see beyond dinnertime. Nowhere in my post did I say 5G shouldn't roll out. Nowhere did I say that there would never be any uses for it. Nowhere did I say smartphones should never have 5G capability. What I said is at this time (and for the near future) there are virtually no benefits to adding it to a smartphone and there are significant drawbacks. If you look at the history of tech evolution, this is abundantly clear. The rollouts always take longer than promised, the capabilities are always less than promised, and the actual uses are never what people initially envision. Look at 4G/LTE - even now we have not fully realized the promises made a decade ago. Looking at that history, the pace of the rollout so far in 2019 and the average life of a smartphone, I have absolutely no concerns about any smartphone being 'left behind' by 5G. 


    Sure, but the utility for 5G on phones doesn't emerge until it's available on phones. That's exactly the case demonstrated by my earlier reference to iPhone adding GPS as a feature. That example also demonstrated a case where Apple waited longer than they should have to realize the importance of that technology. It's quite typical for them not to get too worked up about being first with a particular feature, preferring instead to 'get it right.' Nonetheless, with GPS, they had to ditch Google in a hurry, and introduce Apple maps before it was ready, just to catch up with a rapidly growing location-based marketplace. So with 5G, they don't need to be the first ones pushing out hardware, but they can't afford to just sit on it and wait a few years to see what people do with it.

    So saying "the vast majority [of 5G utility] applies to non-smartphone applications and there is little to nothing that requires your smartphone to have 5G capability at this point" is very much an intellectually conservative stance to take on the subject. Your statement is only true so long as smartphones don't have 5G hardware. The 5G infrastructure is coming, and soon. I'm o.k that my current device doesn't have the feature, but I'd be concerned if Apple wasn't already loading it into the pipeline. GPS was added to iPhone in 2008, and Apple Maps pushed out both prematurely and way too late in 2012. The intervening four years saw the proliferation of the use of location data emerge in a decidedly non-Apple way. Apple booted google maps and rolled out Apple maps because they realized they were already way behind, and even though their own maps weren't ready, they couldn't make location services (and a privacy- and security-based implementation of it) a core part of iOS and still have Google right in the middle of it. 5G is going to be a big deal, and they can't afford to sit back for a few years to decide how they want to get into it. 

    P.S. Seriously. Smartphone tech that is already ubiquitous didn't exist thirteen years ago. Think about that. In 2007, Blackberry was the smartphone king, and served primarily a business niche market. The kids who had cellphones were texting each other using number keypads, and they were getting into trouble because their texting volume was blowing out their parents' phone plans, which had a monthly cap on the number of text messages. A kid born just before iPhones came out is just now old enough for her Bat Mitzvah. The timeline between "emerging technology" and being ubiquitous is very, very short.

    MplsP said:
    AppleZulu said:
    larryjw said:
    I can’t think of a technology more expense and less useful, even in the long run, than 5G. 
    If implementation works out, 5G means much faster speeds, much lower latency, and the ability to connect vastly more devices. Downloading movies faster isn't really what 5G would be about. Once you're able to download a high-resolution movie faster than you can watch it, the extra speed doesn't really mean anything to you.

    5G is going to be about the things that haven't been invented yet. When iPhone 1 was introduced, it didn't even have GPS built in. Then they added it. Apple farmed out maps to Google at first, until they realized that Google was using location information to do more things than deliver a GPS map program. The whole abrupt Apple maps introduction/fiasco happened precisely because even Apple hadn't initially realized the full implications of putting an active GPS device in everyone's pocket. Then they realized this add-on tech was going to be a core function. Now a very few short years later, a selling point for iPhones is that Apple is more attentive about making sure you can prevent all the various sundry apps loaded on your device aren't using your location data without your knowledge or permission, because lots of people have thought of new and interesting ways to use location data that didn't even exist a few years ago. 

    So if 5G delivers huge bandwidth, extremely low latency, and the ability to simultaneously connect a huge number of devices, you suddenly have the ability to have lots of separate devices doing things in concert, in real time and orchestrated precisely. Thinking about those GPS maps, consider the following. Right now, if you're driving with a GPS app delivering your proposed route, you can get pretty good ETA info, and in cities that have it, you can get traffic information baked in. If a jam forms up ahead and it gets big and slow enough, your map program will offer an alternative route. Pretty cool, but it's still based on rudimentary data. There's a traffic jam on the route slowing traffic to below a certain speed range. At some threshold, the mapping app will generate an alternate route, based mostly on existing stock info on traffic lights, speed limits, etc. Also, everyone else will get the same info at the same time, causing lots of people to choose the same alternate route, creating a second traffic jam. Lather, rinse and repeat. 

    That scenario with 5G could be very different. The cars that get into the accident instantly relay that info outward. So do most of the cars that have to stop behind the accident. Alternate routes start popping up in real time. If multiple alternates are available, different cars will get different recommendations, creating optimal distributed routing around the accident, minimizing secondary traffic jams. Add an increasing percentage of self-driving cars that respond instantly to these changes, and traffic becomes a whole new experience. That's just an obvious use case. It's the stuff that few or no people have thought of yet that will be truly remarkable.

    Of course, there will also be the unintended consequences along with the sociopathic implementations that we'll also have to deal with, but there you go.
    Well said and true!
    Historically major advances in communications technology have changed computing in profound and unexpected ways.  Those who judge it based on today's uses are left behind in the dust.  As you mentioned:  5G is not about downloading movies faster - although that is typically how it is portrayed and compared in the media and by those with limited vision.
    All of this may be true, but it completely ignores the fact that the vast majority applies to non-smartphone applications and there is little to nothing that requires your smartphone to have 5G capability at this point. It's interesting how the debate on this mirrors politics in the country right now - completely black and white with no room for grey. Everyone assumes that anyone who isn't 110% for 5G in every possible device as soon as humanly possible is automatically a total luddite (or an intellectual conservative) that is to myopic to see beyond dinnertime. Nowhere in my post did I say 5G shouldn't roll out. Nowhere did I say that there would never be any uses for it. Nowhere did I say smartphones should never have 5G capability. What I said is at this time (and for the near future) there are virtually no benefits to adding it to a smartphone and there are significant drawbacks. If you look at the history of tech evolution, this is abundantly clear. The rollouts always take longer than promised, the capabilities are always less than promised, and the actual uses are never what people initially envision. Look at 4G/LTE - even now we have not fully realized the promises made a decade ago. Looking at that history, the pace of the rollout so far in 2019 and the average life of a smartphone, I have absolutely no concerns about any smartphone being 'left behind' by 5G. 



    Yes, you are correct when you say [if you live in the U.S.] "there is little to nothing that requires your smartphone to have 5G capability at this point."  But then, in 2007 the iPhone didn't have much more capability than the typical flip phone "at that point".   Again, you measure tomorrow's uses based on the assumption that they will not change from today's -- and ignore AppleZulu's comprehensive debunking of that theory.
    I did nothing of the sort. Rather you are extrapolating my argument further than it was intended and creating straw man arguments. Again, in bold, just to help you read:

    Nowhere in my post did I say 5G shouldn't roll out. Nowhere did I say that there would never be any uses for it. Nowhere did I say smartphones should never have 5G capability. What I said is at this time (and for the near future) there are virtually no benefits to adding it to a smartphone and there are significant drawbacks. 

    To use your argument about the 2007 iPhone, whether the 2007 iPhone had 3G capability or not played no roll in the development and roll out of 3G tech. We are a bit in a catch22 with 5G - there is virtually no 5G availability in the US (availability in other countries is really of no consequence to me.) There are virtually no phones that use 5G and thus virtually no one to use it. Until it's even modestly available, the main demand will be from technophiles wanting the latest capabilities. Until there's a critical mass, there will be precious little new uses for it. After such uses arise, the time frame for important/critical new uses of the technology is likely 3-5 years beyond that. All that brings us back to my argument for today - unless you are an early adopter that has no problem paying $$$ for cutting edge technology that has very little practical use it makes no sense to buy a 5G phone right now. Save your money and wait a few years. The technology will mature and improve, prices will come down, availability will increase and you can actually decide if any of these fabulous new, undiscovered uses actually matter to you.

    I'll also point out (again) that much of the 5G rollout involves improvements to the infrastructure backbone of the network and all users will benefit, whether they have 5G or not.
    Still, your argument fails on two points:
    1)  To get that critical mass takes BOTH transmitters and receivers.  There's no way it will get there if, as you advocate, the receiver end sits on its butt waiting for it to happen.

    So yeh, by arguing that 5G should not be added to smartphones "today" you are arguing that it shouldn't roll out.
    The analogy is WiFi:  it could not have happened without the availability of BOTH transmitters and receivers.  5G is the same.

    2)  Most iPhones purchased today will be running and operational 5 years from now.  Despite your dire predictions, critical mass for much of the world will occur before that -- other countries and other vendors are charging ahead.  So, who wants to buy a phone that will soon be obsolete -- and it's wrong for Apple to foist something like that onto their unsuspecting customers.  It would be like buying a laptop without (at one point) an ethernet port or, later, without a WiFi receiver.

    Apple caved in to Qualcomm for only one reason:  To get a 5G modem.  So, they got it -- along with the technology to make it work.  It's time they got off their butts.   They owe it to their customers and the world.  By sitting on their butts waiting for it, as you advocate, to mature is holding back progress for the world and short changing the customers who are trusting them and buying their phones today.

    Apple, had their excuse:  Their preferred vendor had failed them.  Now they are out of excuses and its time for them to get off their butts and give their customers and the world what it wants and needs.

    edited November 2019
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