In 2021, 5G has more disadvantages than advantages

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What do we do with 5G in 2021?

No, this will not be an article in which we claim that 4G is good enough and that all developments in the field of mobile internet must stop. If 5G will soon gain momentum, you will be able to download faster and we will all enjoy higher bandwidth. That means that you also have a good connection in busy places. The transition probably won’t be as much of a revolution as that from 3G to 4G, but we’re definitely going to notice.

Unfortunately, it is far from being that far. Only in the fall of 2022 will the so-called 3.5 GHz frequency be auctioned and 5G can really spread its wings. Until then, we are stuck with a poor substitute: it may be called 5G, but is hardly faster than 4G. And that’s not the only problem. Some phones, such as the Poco F2 Pro, sometimes indicate that a 5G connection is active, while 4G is secretly being used. That is pure deception. Devices such as the Motorola Moto G 5G cannot work with all networks yet.

5G comes at the expense of other components

With a little good will, the above can be called teething problems. The main disadvantage of 5G is that it costs money, while in 2021 it is of little use. Smartphone manufacturers have a specific budget for each device. The processor has to be paid for, the housing, cameras and so on.

Partly due to all kinds of licenses, a 5G modem is more expensive than a 4G modem. A phone with 5G therefore costs more than an otherwise identical model with 4G. So the manufacturer has to choose: do I make the phone more expensive or save on other parts?

The latter often happens. The Samsung Galaxy S21 falls in many areas compared to the Galaxy S20. For example, the housing is now made of plastic instead of glass, the phone has less RAM and you can no longer expand the storage with a micro-SD card. In addition, the screen has a lower resolution.

Now those are downgrades of the Galaxy S21 very cleverly chosen, because the average user will not notice that much. With cheaper models such as the Samsung Galaxy A42 5G it is a completely different story. The screen of that device has such a low resolution that you can count old-fashioned pixels. So Samsung takes one step forward, but another one back. This results in a painful split.

Of Galaxy A41 had ‘only’ 4G on board, but it had a significantly finer screen. That is more useful in daily life. Unfortunately, 5G makes it much easier to advertise.

Why is 5G already such a hype in 2021?

For the time being, 5G is of little use to you and it comes at the expense of other, often more important parts of a smartphone. Why are manufacturers already investing so heavily on this hype? The answer is simple: advertising.

5G has almost become synonymous with ‘the future’. Such a sticker on the box makes people feel like they are buying a futuristic device. It is a short, easy-to-remember term that you can use in any commercial. Samsung even adds it to the names of especially its cheaper phones. That is of course a deliberate strategy: this way, less fortunate consumers get the impression that they too can get a piece of science fiction at home.

As unfortunately happens more often, those advertisements are quite misleading. The current 5G is not worth a mediocre screen. You may even wonder whether the super-fast version will offer enough benefits to be sacrificed in other areas. We can only hope that the price of 5G modems has dropped significantly by then. Then we no longer have to have that discussion.

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