| ▲ | walrus01 5 hours ago | |
Tell that to the cellular industry marketing people who decided to put "4.5G" on things. Also not everything that is marketed "5G" is equal in capability, there's a myriad of different bands in different regulatory regimes in the world, some of which go through material like brick/concrete much better than others. You'll see "5G" connections that have speed tests in an urban area that top out at 50 Mbps downstream and others where you'll have 850 Mbps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_frequency_bands Even within a category such as "4G" there have been significant advances in some radio capabilities since it was introduced, like MU-MIMO, vs early "4G". There's a very large number of different things that are all being marketed as "5G" now, so it's really a drastic oversimplification to try to say that all 5G is the same thing. Do you not remember the very early days of "3G" when cellular carriers were trying to market EDGE/GPRS as if it was 3G? | ||
| ▲ | ryandrake 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |
"G" is becoming about as useful for identifying differences in mobile performance as "X" was for identifying CDROM speeds. As soon as marketers realized they could put any number they wanted before the X and outcompete their competitors, the number became useless. | ||
| ▲ | mytailorisrich 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |
Gs may be used and possibly overused in marketing but that doesn't mean that they are meaningless terms and "mostly marketing" as per my previous comment. Again, the terms are heavily used in the industry in technical and engineering circles. "Even within a category such as "4G" there have been significant advances in some radio capabilities since it was introduced". Yes but this is as I explained in my previous comment. There have been new features and new capabilities but on the same technology and system architecture. Think of improving internal combustion engines over time vs. switching to electric motors. That's how Gs broadly work on the technical side. Perhaps the issue is marketing overusing a technical term that does not lend itself to it super well, especially when comparing 4G and 5G, from a smartphone consumer standpoint. | ||