Do you typically find 4G or 5G faster?

[AllThingsTech]

I’m curious and done some tests. In some areas, 4G is faster than 5G, in other areas vice versa. I guess it also depends on congestion.

It’s interesting that speeds vary in this manner - the misconception seems to be 5G is always faster than 4G - not necessarily always the case, given it depends on congestion and the specific frequency bands used by 4G and 5G - higher frequency means higher speeds but lower coverage and vice versa; it’s possible for 4G and 5G to use either/all of low-band, mid-band and high-band frequencies.

Typically 5G is non-standalone (NSA) meaning 4G is the signalling anchor while 5G is where the downloads occur. In spite of this, if 5G frequency bands are congested, you’d need to switch over to 4G - it doesn’t happen automatically.

In terms of the impact of congestion, on which is preferable, here goes:
- If 5G is congested, switching to 4G would offer faster download speeds.
- If 4G is severely congested, given that 5G and 4G use the 4G anchor as a “traffic controller”, this will negatively impact both 4G and 5G performance.
- If 4G is moderately congested, it may negatively impact 4G download speeds, yet handle signalling just fine - if 5G is uncongested, 5G would improve speeds.

So what are your findings? You can use speed testing websites to discover the impact of 4G and 5G.

 

[AllThingsTech]

Bump - I truly am curious

@Retro
@petermarkley
@Crims
@Tiffany
@Mars
@danky
@Hitcore

 

[petermarkley]

(I have nothing to contribute to this conversation, sorry … I’m not very knowledgeable about networking or telecommunication standards)

 

[AllThingsTech]

Fair enough @petermarkley, I’m nerd level max here

Autismal brains think alike, hmm, @Hitcore ?

 

[Retro]

In some areas, 4G is faster than 5G, in other areas vice versa.

That's about the sum total of it.

I leave my iPhone on 4G to save power so the battery lasts longer unless there's a bad signal with hardly any throughput, then I try 5G or 5G standalone and hope it improves it. Doesn't work every time though.

tbh all one mostly does on a smartphone is browse websites, watch video and exchange text messages, so it really makes no difference whether your connection is going at 20Mbps or 200Mbps. If it's snappy, it's good enough.

(I have nothing to contribute to this conversation, sorry … I’m not very knowledgeable about networking or telecommunication standards)

Hmmm... time to swot up on Googling and Wikipedia then.

 

[AllThingsTech]

I also find that that 5-10% battery saviour using 4G vs 5G can make or break my day!

Sure, sometimes it’s 100mbps on 4G vs 200mbps on 5G - I’ll admit that often the upload speed is faster on 4G than 5G. There’ve also been times where there’s the difference between <1mbps and 50mbps, varying between 4G and 5G - big difference. Remember, most smartphones increasingly possess 5G capabilities, and so congestion is increasingly likely on 5G over 4G. Often but not always, switching to 4G mitigates congestion.

I don’t fully understand why 4G upload speeds can be faster than 5G but I assume it’s due to coordination overhead - did you know that with 5G NSA, 5G is typically used for download bandwidth with 4G being used for upload bandwidth?

 

[AllThingsTech]

hgfghf

@Retro banned for spamming my thread Oh dear, what do we do without the site owner to maintain this precious Nerd zone?


I realise later iOS/Android versions may have capability to toggle 5G SA in particular ON/OFF, but do you realise that your contract specifically myst include SA, and that typically 5G contracts, unless you purchase a premium contract, only have 5G NSA by default?

Has the difference between 4G and 5G ever been particularly noticeable to you, @Retro ?

The difference on Vodafone between 3G and 4G was far more noticeable to me but not in the way you’d expect given that 4G didn’t use the 3G anchor, AFAIK - in areas outside of London, frequently disabling 4G would result in much faster speeds (not superfast as defined by current standards, but 5mbps 3G vs <1mbps 4G) due to the congestion factor - most smartphones had 4G enabled, meaning those bands get saturated.

 

[Retro]

Sorry, those were temporary random characters that I typed to get round a quirk of the editor and then forgot to delete. They're deleted now.

 

[AllThingsTech]

Sorry, those were temporary random characters that I typed to get round a quirk of the editor and then forgot to delete. They're deleted now.

Ah OK, thanks for clarifying

I genuinely thought you were trying to imply that you didn’t understand that lengthy explanation i gave on congestion Honestly? I did feel surprised, given that 1) This is a nerd zone and 2) You post about physics all the time

Well, I’m glad this one didn’t tire you out

 

[Hitcore]

Autismal brains think alike, hmm, @Hitcore ?

Not always. The spectrum encompasses a lot of variables. In some aspects our 'tism appears to be alike, in others it does not.

Anyway, to answer the topic's question:

Do you typically find 4G or 5G faster?

I honestly would not know. I live in rural lands. Without even a fixed internet connection, the lines simply do not go here. Too remote. So I have a 5G router. Except that 5G does not reach all the way to here, so in practice I'm on 4G.

I just did a test: 23.9 Mbps down, 21.8 Mbps up.

It's fast enough for my meager needs. But it does say something about the state of my technological access. I had better internet 20 years ago, back when I was living in the city.

 

[AllThingsTech]

@Hitcore I’m not sure > 20mbps was even a thing 20 years ago

 

[Hitcore]

It was. Cable internet (as in: from the TV cable) was common in the mid 2000s in my country and it was capable of surprising speeds, though a higher end subscription was required to reach 20 Mbps (the basic subscriptions usually gave you around 5 Mbps).

 

[AllThingsTech]

It was. Cable internet (as in: from the TV cable) was common in the mid 2000s in my country and it was capable of surprising speeds, though a higher end subscription was required to reach 20 Mbps (the basic subscriptions usually gave you around 5 Mbps).

View attachment 3002

Remember, most of us had phone-lines for such, and so actual speed depended on distance from the exchange. I remember I had 16mbps with Sky but only received 3-4mbps

Only Virgin Media had fibre to the cabinet (and copper coaxial to the house, much better than phone line nut slightly higher latency than full fibre to the house) back in the day, and this was the only provider that could guaranteed near-full speeds.

Note that this was in the UK, backwards compared to like South Korea. Even Virgin Media 20 years ago only had 20mbps as their highest speed. Dunno how the speed of fibre rollout was in the US?

 

[AllThingsTech]

I had better internet 20 years ago, back when I was living in the city.

Wait… you said 20mbps was top package back in the day, yet you’re receiving 20mbps now?

So you didn’t necessarily have better internet 20 years ago, but still crazy that it hasn’t really improved for you. They do need to do a better job at rollouts in rural areas IMO.

 

[Hitcore]

Not literally down to the last exact megabit, and of course there was the matter of performance during peak hours internet traffic versus quiet hours and other variables, but for the most part the speeds were similar'ish to what I have today, yes.

They do need to do a better job at rollouts in rural areas IMO.

Danish rural areas are quite something else. My house isn't even connected to any sewer system. There's a large septic-tank under my house/garden that gets emptied once a year.
Having an internet connection and a sewer sound like things that every house a developed European country should have, but the population density in my area is so low, that it is simply not cost-effective and therefore not a priority. I doubt that my house will ever get connected to those things. It's more likely that in the future human populations will be fully concentrated in cities and that agriculture will largely become a thing of the past, meaning that rural populations will be near non-existent too.

 

[AllThingsTech]

Not literally down to the last exact megabit, and of course there was the matter of performance during peak hours internet traffic versus quiet hours and other variables, but for the most part the speeds were similar'ish to what I have today, yes.

Well, I literally mean speeds were much slower than advertised when we had phone lines over fibre optic cables! Big difference, I tell you - 3mbps vs 16mbps!

I get you regarding peak hours. 5G is shared between users, bandwidth isn’t limited to a single household, unlike home broadband providers. Remember the days of traffic management? At least with my provider in the UK, they’d throttle heavy users down to very slow speeds.

 

[Hitcore]

Remember the days of traffic management? At least with my provider in the UK, they’d throttle heavy users down to very slow speeds

I have never experienced that. And I used to be a heavy user myself back in those days, having torrented lots of stuff.

By 2009 I had a 100/100 connection by the way. And sometimes I would actually reach those speeds.
This was because I was living in an apartment complex of about 20 units that shared one seriously badass internet connection. During the day it was heavily used by all tenants so it could feel choppy at times. But as I was more of a night owl and probably the only one or at least one of the very few to be using the internet in the middle of the night, I was able to get the fullest out of it.

It feels weird to say that the best internet connection I've ever had was in 2009, and that in 2026 it doesn't come even near what I used to have.

 

[Tiffany]

I have not seen a difference between 4G or 5G. I mostly just hope my cell phone works.

 

[Crims]

I'd bias this conversation, mostly because I always choose the lower number because it's easier

 

[AllThingsTech]

I'd bias this conversation, mostly because I always choose the lower number because it's easier

For battery saving purposes? I see

 

[Hitcore]

I'd bias this conversation, mostly because I always choose the lower number because it's easier

Based. I have that with Windows.
11 < 7.

 

[AllThingsTech]

Based. I have that with Windows.
11 < 7.

Erm, only if you apply that 2-year old logic that 11 = 2 Epic fail…

 

[Hitcore]

Alright, let's put it like this then:

ME < Vista < 8 < 11 < 8.1 < 10 < 3.1 < 95 < 98(SE) < 2000 < XP < 7

This is of course subjective and based on my experience, but I hope you can see now what I mean.

 

[AllThingsTech]

No, sorry, I don’t understand?

 

[Hitcore]

It's just a ranking of Windows versions, from worst to best. (again, based on my humble opinion)