What I want from 5G phone connections
Is not, in fact, faster mobile internet.
I mean, I'm not going to say "No, don't give me that faster internet, keep it away from me." But it's not the main thing that I'm missing from 4G.
There are two main things I want:
1) More efficiency. I want a mode which is used 99% of the time where the phone is doing nothing at all, and so it's barely connected to the network in the first place. Because right now I've got my phone switched to 3G, because 4G knocks a good hour or so off my my daily battery life. And if there's no signal, because I'm in the middle of nowhere, or inside a big metal box, I don't want the transmitter to ramp up to maximum power in the hopes of finding a signal. I mean, I want it to do that for maybe 1/10 of a second, but after that I want it to back off and assume that there _is_ no signal, and then use no battery at all for 30 seconds before trying that 1/10 of a second again. Because being out of signal in Hereford _also_ really sucked battery-wise.
2) The ability to make phone calls and send texts even if I'm not connected directly to my provider's network. I mean, they can do this for roaming to a different network, but if I'm completely out of signal, but have WiFi then why on earth can't my phone use that to pass voice/SMS/MMS over? It's all just bits after all. And yet, when I was in the holiday home in Hereford, completely out of mobile signal, but with perfectly workable WiFi, I'm cut off from phone/texts? This makes no sense...
Give me both of those and _then_ I want more speed, obviously. (Although what I'll use it for other than tethering I have no idea.)
Original post on Dreamwidth - there are
comments there.
I mean, I'm not going to say "No, don't give me that faster internet, keep it away from me." But it's not the main thing that I'm missing from 4G.
There are two main things I want:
1) More efficiency. I want a mode which is used 99% of the time where the phone is doing nothing at all, and so it's barely connected to the network in the first place. Because right now I've got my phone switched to 3G, because 4G knocks a good hour or so off my my daily battery life. And if there's no signal, because I'm in the middle of nowhere, or inside a big metal box, I don't want the transmitter to ramp up to maximum power in the hopes of finding a signal. I mean, I want it to do that for maybe 1/10 of a second, but after that I want it to back off and assume that there _is_ no signal, and then use no battery at all for 30 seconds before trying that 1/10 of a second again. Because being out of signal in Hereford _also_ really sucked battery-wise.
2) The ability to make phone calls and send texts even if I'm not connected directly to my provider's network. I mean, they can do this for roaming to a different network, but if I'm completely out of signal, but have WiFi then why on earth can't my phone use that to pass voice/SMS/MMS over? It's all just bits after all. And yet, when I was in the holiday home in Hereford, completely out of mobile signal, but with perfectly workable WiFi, I'm cut off from phone/texts? This makes no sense...
Give me both of those and _then_ I want more speed, obviously. (Although what I'll use it for other than tethering I have no idea.)
Original post on Dreamwidth - there are
comments there.