Testing 5G: Hype vs. Reality

Conclusion

To quote Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon, "5G is here". Well, sort of. Kind of. Ever so slightly. Thing is, though - even if it's not fully "here" now, it will soon be, and it has the potential to make our world even more interconnected than before. That can lead to exciting and probably still unknown new use cases popping up all over once the infrastructure is in place across the globe. Not just self-driving cars talking to each other in real time, or doctors performing surgeries remotely with the aid of robots, but things we can't even imagine at the moment.

Yes, right now, it's still early days for 5G, but it's coming sooner than you may expect. Coverage is increasing a lot faster than it did back when 4G was nascent, and at this rate most of the world will have some form of Sub-6 5G within a year or so. mmWave is an entirely different beast, though, and given considerations about its cost effectiveness in covering a lot of land area well, it might get relegated to niche uses in a lot of places - like replacing fiber to the home connections, for example. In a lot of countries which currently lack the "last mile" fiber infrastructure, it is probably cheaper to deploy mmWave 5G and give people special high-gain modems to access it than fiddle with cables everywhere.

From our real-word testing we can say that a reasonable conservative estimate of the gains 5G brings in terms of speed is around 2x-3x those of 4G+/LTE-A, but this is thanks to two things working in concert: 5G itself being able to use radio bandwidth in a more efficient way, and also the fact that carriers may simply allocate more bandwidth to 5G, especially with higher Sub-6 bands because those are likely to be less used. This may not always be the case though, especially with lower-band rollouts.

In an apples to apples comparison with the exact same bandwidth, 5G would probably deliver around 30% more, based on the best that 4G+ can currently achieve. So is that enough? It may appear disappointing, but in actual use it very much depends where you are coming from. Does your network of choice do carrier aggregation on 4G, with 256QAM and MIMO? If so, then the number above applies. If not, then the difference will be much higher in the improvements you'll see with 5G. And in the future, carrier aggregation will be a thing for 5G as well, which will enable even better speeds from the same bandwidth.

All that said, if you're happy with 4G, stick with it, at least for now. There is no 5G rush just yet. If, on the other hand, you love living on the bleeding edge, or if the phone you want to get from your carrier already has 5G built in, well then, welcome to the future! It's exciting, even if it may not be everything that the incessant marketing has made it out to be. At least not yet.

Regardless of whether you intend to hop on a 5G network or not, however, there is already a "5G tax" you'll unfortunately have to pay if you jump to a new smartphone - and it may be evident in the price of the product or it may be hidden in the way of shorter battery life.

But like with all new technologies, that 5G premium will be absorbed and will dissolve in the next update cycle of smartphone chipsets, which should come this autumn and effectively be implemented in 2021. Also more and more mid-rangers are going to come out with 5G in the next few months, and they'll be hitting lower and lower price points.

In a time not so far away from now, all these kinks will have been ironed out and 5G will end up being a mere box to be ticked on most spec sheets. Just as it should be. Once it achieves 'default' status, we can hopefully start to see the real innovations pouring in - from apps to new product categories, and who knows what else. Exciting times lie ahead.