Device has superfast speed, but only if you can find it
I started this iPhone review in the most peculiar way: by opening a map to find out where I could test it.
That’s because Apple’s newest iPhones, for the first time, work with 5G, the ultrafast fifth- generation wireless networks that will theoretically let people download a movie to their devices in seconds. The problem? The superspeedy 5G networks have not been rolled out everywhere.
I learned this the hard way. When Apple provided The New York Times with iPhone 12s to test on Verizon’s 5G network, I quickly discovered that my neighborhood in the San Francisco Bay Area didn’t have any 5G connection. So I went on a journey through San Francisco to find the superfast data speeds that Apple and Verizon executives promised when they unveiled the new iPhones earlier this month.
When I found places where I could connect to the fastest 5G networks, the iPhone experience was hugely gratifying. The network delivered download speeds to the phone that were up to seven times as fast as the best broadband services I have ever used.
But the locations where I tracked down ultrafast 5G were far less satisfying. At one point, I found the speedy connection in the back of a Safeway parking lot. Another time I was in front of a Pet Food Express. What would I do with an incredibly fast internet connection there?
In most parts of San Francisco, the iPhone instead drew data from a more vanilla flavor of 5G that Verizon calls “5G Nationwide,” which is the connection that most of the country will get for the foreseeable future. Those download speeds ranged from much slower than to twice as fast as my older iPhone, which was on Verizon’s 4G network.
That’s all to say that despite the hype around 5G, the network underwhelmed. At this point, it
store” into a global product distribution utility. Recent selection of featured Prime Day sales seemed COVID- aware: cheap childproof tablets, noise- canceling headphones, an Instant Pot and countless items to furnish a home office.
The pandemic gadget boom is a story of both new needs fulfilled and old desires restored. Buying noise canceling headphones is, of course, a consumerist treat, setting aside the new circumstances that made them feel necessary — the construction downstairs, the baby 20 feet away, the spouse simultaneously trapped in a video meeting. You can feel the faintest muscle memory activate when you comparison shop for a gadget of a type you’ve never purchased before, even if that gadget is — judging by back orders and top listings on Amazon as the winter creeps closer — a SAD lamp or an outdoor radiator.
This gadget boom will end like every other — with a bunch of littleused and rapidly obsolete junk stowed away in closets and landfills around the globe — but it won’t inspire much nostalgia. This isn’t spontaneous mass hobbyism or a slide into decadence. It’s a cornered populace spending what they can in hopes that some novel invention will stave off disaster, or even just gloom.
Gadget consumption has long been portrayed as an interface with some part of the future: options on a shelf from which you can select how, when, or if you want to engage with whatever is coming next. This was always a pleasant illusion, and it’s one the pandemic has made impossible to sustain.
In this brutally unexpected year, the luckiest were buying their way through hard times, sustained by the hope that another purchase might fix a new problem. The rest were coping, meeting sudden demands or simply trying to stay safe, whatever the cost.
Pandemic gadgets don’t bother to lie about being the next big thing.
They do not even claim to be a way to catch up with the next big thing. Their guaranteed future obsolescence — perhaps the defining characteristic of a gadget — isn’t something to hide, because when it come to pass, it won’t be a disappointment. It will be a relief.