Are Your Phone's 5G Icon and Signal Bars Lying to You? (msn.com) 46
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post:
Look at the top right corner of your phone. You might see an icon with "5G" and another with vertical bars showing the strength of your internet connection. Those symbols don't mean what you think they do.
If your phone shows "5G," you're not necessarily connected to the latest and zippiest cellphone network technology. It might just mean that 5G connections are available nearby. And the bars are a cellular version of a shrug. There is no standard measure of how much signal strength each bar represents. "The connection icon is a lie," said Avi Greengart, president of the technology analysis firm Techsponential...
The good news is you might not need 5G, anyway. Most of the time, your phone calls, texting and web surfing are perfectly fine on the prior generation of wireless technology called 4G or sometimes "LTE." Many phone networks will funnel you over 5G service when it makes a real difference, like if you're on a video call or playing an intense video game.
If you see more specific types of 5G icons, like "5G UW" used by Verizon or "5G UC" if you're on T-Mobile service, Hyers said you're probably connected to a 5G network at that moment. Those extra letters or symbols sometimes indicate types of 5G technology that are capable of faster and more reliable connections, but they aren't always better, depending on your circumstances. Confusingly, AT&T has showed "5G E" icons on phones. That is not 5G service at all.
Here's how major carriers responded to the Post's reporter:
If your phone shows "5G," you're not necessarily connected to the latest and zippiest cellphone network technology. It might just mean that 5G connections are available nearby. And the bars are a cellular version of a shrug. There is no standard measure of how much signal strength each bar represents. "The connection icon is a lie," said Avi Greengart, president of the technology analysis firm Techsponential...
The good news is you might not need 5G, anyway. Most of the time, your phone calls, texting and web surfing are perfectly fine on the prior generation of wireless technology called 4G or sometimes "LTE." Many phone networks will funnel you over 5G service when it makes a real difference, like if you're on a video call or playing an intense video game.
If you see more specific types of 5G icons, like "5G UW" used by Verizon or "5G UC" if you're on T-Mobile service, Hyers said you're probably connected to a 5G network at that moment. Those extra letters or symbols sometimes indicate types of 5G technology that are capable of faster and more reliable connections, but they aren't always better, depending on your circumstances. Confusingly, AT&T has showed "5G E" icons on phones. That is not 5G service at all.
Here's how major carriers responded to the Post's reporter:
- "AT&T said its '5G' indicators on phones line up with a telecommunications standards organization that established the icon to mean 5G networks are available."
- "Verizon didn't respond to my questions."
- "T-Mobile said for most of its cellphone network, your phone accurately reflects if you're on 5G."
The article suggests setting your phone to just automatically switch to 5G networks when high-bandwidth applications are in use...
All uploads are LTE (Score:2)
Re: All uploads are LTE (Score:2)
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Ain't no body will notice emails/text of most data going through LTE.
You underestimate the power of OCD in some users. What used to work just fine on 3G systems will now trigger panic attacks in some people when they realize they aren't using the latest tech.
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Here's how major carriers responded to the Post's reporter:
Every carrier that was asked:
5G is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.
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Reporter is an idiot (Score:1, Troll)
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AT&T has always loved lying to you (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not the only way AT&T lies to you when you're using their service.
If you're in the US and roaming on an AT&T partner network, or if there's a natural disaster and disaster roaming is enabled and you're roaming on, for example, T-Mobile, it will still say "AT&T" even though you're not on their network.
This is specific to the US, too; if you go to say, Canada, it will say ROGERS or Bell or whatever. But if you're roaming within the US it will lie.
Also a few years ago your phone would say "4G" even though you were on a 3G network. AT&T justified it by saying their network performs like a 4G network. Seriously. It's like bad comedy.
Other providers don't seem to be as bad about this, but I'm sure they have their own issues too.
Re:AT&T has always loved lying to you (Score:5, Funny)
On the other hand, AT&T has been very honest when they display zero bars and a "No service available" message. Which happens more frequently every day.
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On the other hand, AT&T has been very honest when they display zero bars and a "No service available" message. Which happens more frequently every day.
To be fair, that credit belongs more to your phone than the network provider.
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I'll have to ask a few of my neighbors when I see them standing on their front porches, trying to get a signal.
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I meant the credit goes to the phone for detecting the lack of service and zero bars -- the provider can't really send you a signal saying there's no signal.
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the provider can't really send you a signal
That appears to be the problem. The N bars signal strength displayed is just the r.f. signal strength from whichever tower my phone happens to register with. If my phone (in a fixed location) went from 5 bars to no bars, I'd suspect that the cell station was going up and down or was overloaded with traffic and couldn't handle any more idle phones. Since it goes back and forth from one or two to zero, I'm guessing that I'm at the hairy edge of a cell site's coverage area and there are no more adjacent cells
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I was in the middle of the woods at a camping site this summer. I was really surprised to see 5G on my phone. 3 Bars. Could not load any sites at all. I had internet at like 116 baud or something. That is the other side of the equation: they increase RF bandwidth (if it reaches you), but not the cell site internet connectivity.
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I had internet at like 116 baud or something.
Some sperglord closer in was probably tying up the available bandwidth trying to play WoW.
To get higher data rates, you need more r.f. bandwidth. More subcarriers bonded together to provide fewer distinct virtual data connections. Trouble is, only the higher frequency cellular blocks can cram a sufficient number of sub channels in to support the demand. But the high frequencies don't travel very far (line of sight, blocking by foliage, etc.). And now that the telecoms have "advertised" 5G availability by
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Increasing RF bandwidth does not mean they increased the internet link at the cell site. They mostly havent.
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This is not the only way AT&T lies to you when you're using their service. ... Also a few years ago your phone would say "4G" even though you were on a 3G network. AT&T justified it by saying their network performs like a 4G network. Seriously. It's like bad comedy.
Wait! What? You mean I can't trust that AT&T 5GE icon? What about that 9G [theverge.com] one?
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To be fair I think that's standard practice for most providers in Europe when roaming as well. The key thing is if you are off your contracted costs, i.e. you are roaming to a network that will charge you differently to what your home network does. Again, in Europe carriers have mostly been forced to do reciprocal agreements where they cover each others bad signal areas and it doesn't count as roaming for billing purposes.
Is that not the case for AT&T? Do they charge you more when you roam but it still
Re: AT&T has always loved lying to you (Score:2)
Strength of âoeinternet connectionâ (Score:3)
I stopped reading there. That has never been what those bars meant, and they mean it even less now.
Where I am, signal strength is rarely the issue anyway. All of the cell towers are so oversubscribed on their internet link that getting a packet through during peak hours is unlikely. But calls work fine, very few get dropped. Clearly the bottleneck is with the IP portion of the link. We definitely do need a metric for that too, since carriers wonâ(TM)t invest in themselves unless forced.
Re:Strength of âoeinternet connectionâ (Score:5, Interesting)
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5G does actually have provision for telling the device how congested the network is, but nobody really uses it. Phones might internally use it to see if they can move to a less congested cell, but I don't know of any that expose that information to the user.
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I stopped reading there. That has never been what those bars meant, and they mean it even less now.
Where I am, signal strength is rarely the issue anyway. All of the cell towers are so oversubscribed on their internet link that getting a packet through during peak hours is unlikely. But calls work fine, very few get dropped. Clearly the bottleneck is with the IP portion of the link. We definitely do need a metric for that too, since carriers wonâ(TM)t invest in themselves unless forced.
And this is why even if your phone was telling the truth about signal strength, it is still next to useless because it only measures the signal (in db) between you and the tower, not how congested the tower is. Given that a mobile signal is a small chunk of bandwidth (around 20-80 MHz) chopped up into chunks (5-20 MHz) and shared amongst all users problems with phone signals are usually down to congestion, not poor coverage.
Doubly so that most of the "speed" from LTE comes down to MIMO (Multiple Input, M
Locked phones (Score:2)
I'm wondering if this behaviour is only on phones sold by/locked to a specific provider? What would happen if I take a European-purchased unlocked Android phone to the USA and dropped a pay-as-you-go AT&T SIM into the second slot?
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I can't get a straight answer to that question either. With GSM, it was easy (paying attention to the 2 vs 4 band phone differences). Now, nobody's talking. Given the differences mentioned in TFS, I'm wondering if you can even carry a 5G phone across different US providers.
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No phone has all those bands and many of those bands are only for certain countries. iPhones for an example only have 5G mmWave in the US. (This corresponds to FR2.
There's also non terrestrial bands allocated for talking to Satellites.
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Are there public mmWave deployement in north america ?
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5G itself means very little (Score:5, Insightful)
"5G is divided into three frequency bands (low, mid, and high). Each band has different capabilities: the low band (less than 1GHz) has greater coverage but lower speeds, the mid band (1GHz–6GHz) offers a balance of both, and the high band (24GHz–40GHz) offers higher speeds but a smaller coverage radius."
Frequency actually connected would tell you something, 5G doesn't really.
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And the bars _should_ tell you something but it is completely dependent on the manufacturers implementation of what's called received signal strength.
These days that calculation should really be the same (due to the modulation and HW used - which has become extremely uniform), however there is some amount of averaging going on and that can potentially have a large effect on the value. Averaging _should_ be done, it's a question of how much.
Signal strength varies wildly based on the path. Local nulls are a t
Inaccurate summary (Score:2)
Betteridge gets it wrong here (Score:2)
The answer is, well yes, of course they're lying to you! Just like a cell service coverage map lies to you.
I always assumed (Score:2)
Advice (Score:2)
The article suggests setting your phone to just automatically switch to 5G networks when high-bandwidth applications are in use...
So that you use 5G to send SMS?
5G+ (Score:2)
My only app that really can benefit from the higher speed than LTE is YouTube TV. It worked fine on my pre-5G iPhone XR. When I upgraded to the 14 Pro, I was getting the 5G sometimes. I didn't see much difference where I could get a high def picture on my phone but it took a little while and fast forward was still slow.
However, then I started seeing 5G+ in the indicator sometimes. When I see that, the picture is clear in a second and I can fast forward YT and YTTV recordings with little lag. I didn't see an
Localized 5g symbols? (Score:2)
The 2g/3g/4g/5g symbol and telco logo can be localized which means someone running something like a stingray can send any image they want to appear in that part of the screen. That came up in Ruxcon in 2016.
Best I ever got on speed test (Score:1)
Echo... echo... echo... (Score:2)
Same discussion as we had in the GPRS days.
Amazing how nothing ever changes.
I hoped that by now the bars represented an approximation taking into account the dB levels of the cell tower as seen by my phone and my connection to the cell tower as seen by the tower.
But I guess not.
Massive MIMO = Full 5G (Score:2)