iPhones Will Get Bigger And More Expensive This Year Thanks To 5G
from the bigger,-faster,-stronger dept
While the airwaves are inundated with ads insisting that fifth-generation (5G) wireless is a transformative technology, we’ve noted repeatedly how much of this stuff is little more than hype designed to spur lagging smartphone sales. While faster, more resilient wireless networks will certainly be a good thing, when the standard arrives at scale several years from now, it’s not actually going to transform the world in the way carrier ads would lead you to believe. And, in fact, some things will actually get a bit dumber before 5G fully arrives.
Case in point: 5G-supporting phones are already expensive and hard to come by, much like the networks they’re supposed to attach to. Qualcomm was so eager to hype 5G and sell more hardware, the company removed the integrated 4G LTE chipset in its 2020 Snapdragon 865 system-on-a-chip (SOC). But one of the impacts of removing integrated LTE is that 5G support now requires more battery life and more space, increasing phone size and overall device cost:
This means nearly every flagship Android phone will be a 5G phone in 2020, and putting the 5G and 4G on a giant extra chip means smartphones are going to use way more power, no matter which cell network you’re connected to. When 5G networks are only going to be in their infancy in 2020, this sounds like an across-the-board downgrade to me.
Apple’s been lambasted in some quarters for being slower to market with 5G phones, even though the networks the phones will run on are patchy at best and will be for several years, still. Apple’s finally pleasing those folks and will announce the iPhone 12 family of devices later this year, which will likely be, you guessed it, bigger and more expensive to accommodate 5G:
In order to add a 5G modem into an iPhone, there needs to be space. There are physical limitations to the current 5.8-inch and 6.5-inch iPhone 11 Pro that make it impossible for Apple to retain the same dimensions. Because 5G modems are still so new, they’re larger (to support multiple spectrum) and more power-hungry; this is no different than the first smartphones with 4G LTE (the HTC Thunderbolt on Verizon was a fatty).
But it is different in that the hype surrounding 5G is exponentially larger than 4G hype ever was. Again, largely thanks to a saturated smartphone sales curve, courtesy of a plateau in overall design and innovation. Consumers are barely using the 30+ Mbps they receive (sometimes) via 4G now. Although it’s not necessarily a bad thing, as faster speeds will drive innovation, few are currently calling for gigabit speeds in their pockets. Most consumer studies show that, more than anything, what consumers want is lower data prices.
In time, 5G (and a variety of technologies like virtualization rolling hand in hand with the standard) will provide faster, better, more reliable networks. But, as we keep noting, it’s not some deus ex machina or panacea for the broadband sector. Thanks to corruption, regulatory capture, muted competition, and consolidation, you’re going to pay more than ever for the same patchy availability and shaky customer service the sector has long been known for. As usual with consumer tech, the smart play will be to wait a year or two for phone design, battery development, and network deployment to catch up before diving into the 5G pool.
Comments on “iPhones Will Get Bigger And More Expensive This Year Thanks To 5G”
Luckily, 5G will cure the back pain caused by carrying such a bulky device in your pocket.
wny?
Why did you leave out the fact that Apple currently uses separate chips for 4g, so the replacement 4g/5g chip will take up less additional room that you imply.
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He addressed that in the article:
In other words, putting them on the same chip increases power consumption, which requires a bigger battery, therefore taking up more space and making the phone bigger and more expensive. And the combo 4G/5G chips are still massively bigger compared to existing 4G chips.
In time, as the technology improves, the chips will get smaller again and power consumption will improve and things will return to the way they are today. That won’t be for at least a few years though. They would have been better off waiting to roll out 5G until that time.
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Actually, no he didn’t. Current Apple iPhone models have a separate 4g chip, and new models (once Apple adds 5g) will have 4g/5g in a single separate chip. The fact that the new chip is larger than the old chip was something I referenced in my original post.
I don’t believe there is currently a SoC that includes both 4g and 5g, so while adding 5g to iPhone will (more or less) simply be replacing the 4g chip with a 4g/5g chip, adding 5g to other (android) phones will require making space for the 4g/5g chip. The iPhone will simply have to handle the size difference between the 4g chip and the new 5g chip, others will have to add a new chip.
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Yes, he did. 5G is a power sink, as such it requires a much larger battery than current 4G phones do. So by battery size alone the phones will be much larger, regardless of the size of the actual chips. The fact that 4G/5G combo chips are bigger than straight 4G chips just adds to that. And that’s not counting the additional antennas that will need to be packed into the phones.
And Android phones (which are more prevalent than Apple phones) don’t even have a separate chip for 4G. It’s all on the SoC. 5G currently won’t fit on the SoC so it has to have its own separate chip. So Android phones are going backwards and will be more similar to current iPhones.
Nowhere in your original post did you reference that. You said the new chips would "take up less additional room". This is not true. The new chips are bigger.
No, there isn’t. But there are SoC’s that include 4G. The new chips split 4G off of the SoC and put it on a new chip that does both 4G and 5G. Which makes for more space taken up and a bigger phone. And yes, I’m aware Apple already does that.
Those chips are bigger and again, will require a bigger battery still, which is where a good portion of the additional size comes from. The increased size of the combo chip just makes it worse.
This is true. But both Apple and Android phones will need to make space for a much bigger battery.
And a larger battery and potentially more antennas.
So while you might have a point that Apple phones may not increase in size AS MUCH as some other phones, they still will increase in size because of 5G, which was the writer’s point. In fact, he even linked to an article showing EXACTLY how much bigger the new 5G iphones will be compared to their current 4G counterparts.
Given that, I’m really not sure how you can claim he was being deceptive or leaving anything out in relation to how big the new iphones will be.
I'll Do My Part
I won’t buy a new phone … not until the battery becomes unusable.
But will it have rounded corners?
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Apparently people have forgotten this.
This is a seriously funny comment.
This trend continues, and we’re right back to laptop-sized smartphones.
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The new 5G iPhone:
https://cnet3.cbsistatic.com/img/7n63PXWt8-ZO1Y7YRXX0hcPf_hM=/868×488/2018/03/28/03f5d952-0ccb-4a2c-bd28-597db4c0985f/24-ipad-2018-education.jpg
😉
Hey faster is always better isn’t it?
I mean Concorde is still flying we didn’t settle on slower but far more available method of moving people by air.
Of course, 5G and commercial supersonic flight have some differences that make comparison difficult. It does show though that a new product isn’t guaranteed long term adoption or success.