What you don’t know about 5G

Having said that, the 5g era has been here for two years, and many of you in front of the screen have changed to 5g mobile phones. But I was bored and asked a few friends around me who had changed to 5g mobile phones, but their understanding of 5g was still vague. One friend even didn't know anything: he didn't know how to turn on the 5g switch on a 5g mobile phone, why he needed 5g, and what the use of turning on the 5g function was. It seems that there are still many users whose understanding of 5g remains in the 4g era. So today, Xiao Mo will talk to you about some knowledge about the user's personal experience.

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All 5G mobile phones can enjoy 5G speed for free

Many users think that if they want to upgrade to 5g speed, they not only need a 5g phone, but also need to buy the corresponding 5g package. In fact, this view is wrong. Any 5g phone can enjoy a traffic speed far exceeding 4g. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology explained this issue in the WeChat Micro-News of Industry and Information Technology a long time ago, but unfortunately the scope of this news is very narrow, and the number of users who know about this matter is not large. Words are not enough, here Xiao Mo spent some time testing to show you this knowledge.

The picture comes from the Internet

Here we use the comprehensive Internet speed test tool Speedtest to test the Internet speed.

Testing Tools

Here we turn off the 5g function of the mobile phone and only use the 4g signal to test the traffic speed.

We take the download speed as the analysis object (i.e. the download Mbps in the figure), and we can see that the download speed using only 4g signals is only about 73 megabits, which means that it takes about 112 seconds to download a 1Gb file (Note: 1Gb=1024mb=8*1024Mbps).

Next, we turn on the 5G function. It should be noted that Xiao Mo's card has a 5G signal package with 5Gb of traffic per month. When measuring the speed, Xiao Mo's package balance has not been used up, so the traffic speed under the 5G package is measured here, that is, the "full 5G signal" (the following content uses this name for the sake of distinction). After turning on the 5G switch, Xiao Mo measured the speed again, and the result really shocked me.

The peak download speed even reached an astonishing 560 megabits! That’s nearly eight times faster than the 4G signal! It seems that the 5G download speed is indeed astonishing, a huge improvement over 4G.

Of course, the story is far from over here. Xiao Mo tested it several times and found that the 5G download speed still fluctuates greatly. The faster one can reach about 500 Mbps, and the slower one can even not reach 400 Mbps. It seems that in terms of stability, data traffic is still inferior to WiFi. After a while, Xiao Mo used up all his 5G data traffic (sad, woo woo woo, please pay attention), and planned to test how fast he could run with only the 4G package after the 5G data traffic was used up.

Afterwards, Xiao Mo opened the software again and tested several rounds of data (the figures are all the results of speed measurement using 4G traffic after turning on the 5G function). The results did change.

In five tests using 4G traffic, only one exceeded 400 megabits in download speed, and the rest hovered around 300. It is obviously much slower than the speed measured by the full 5G signal, but it is still much faster than the download speed using the 4G signal.

It seems that the answer announcement of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Micro-Bulletin is accurate. Those who have 5g mobile phones can safely turn on the 5g signal switch of their mobile phones. After all, you have already paid for the use of the 5g function, so just use it with confidence! Of course, if you happen to be financially strong, you can choose to purchase a 5g package to unlock the full 5g signal and enjoy the speed of the times.

Did the operators realize their promises?

The promotional points of 5G functions are far more than just high speed. Low latency is also a major promotional point of 5G. Xiao Mo will also take you to verify whether the low latency characteristics of 5G signals work.

If we talk about the application scenario where low latency features have the greatest impact on ordinary users, it must be online games. We use the network test function of the mobile game Honor of Kings to show the network latency. (The signal type is based on the upper right corner)

Network delay test in the same time period

It can be seen that after switching the 4G network to the 5G network, both the Internet delay and the base station delay have decreased, and the total delay has dropped from over 150ms to below 130ms. However, it is obviously an exaggeration of the low-latency characteristics advertised before the beginning of the 5G era. But it is still worth using, and I believe it will improve the gaming feel of some friends.

Summarize

As long as we have a 5G mobile phone, even if we don’t spend extra money to buy a 5G package, we can enjoy 5G’s ultra-fast speed and lower latency. However, we should also note that after the 5G function is turned on, the power consumption of the mobile phone’s Internet access will increase compared to 4G and WiFi. If your mobile phone has low battery and there is no way to charge it in a short time, it is recommended to turn off the 5G function.