Buying a 5G iPhone doesn’t mean 5G service
Highly touted technology comes in three flavors
The one thing to know about 5G on the iPhone 12 lineup Apple introduced Tuesday is that there won’t be any one “5G” on board them.
Instead, these smartphones – from the $699-andup iPhone 12 mini to the $1,099-plus iPhone 12 Pro Max – can tune into three kinds of 5G, each with a different mix of speed and range.
That comprehensive support sets Apple apart from other smartphone vendors.
“I was impressed that they’re being consistent in their rollout with 5G,” said analyst Mark Vena with Moor Insights & Strategy.
Your carrier, however, may not be as flexible.
Which 5G it supports – and where – will decide whether this next generation of wireless broadband delivers meaningful benefits to a new iPhone.
Apple and Verizon, the only carrier among the big three to get a spot on stage during Tuesday’s online event, spent much of that time touting millimeter-wave 5G, named for the high frequencies it uses. But its exceedingly fast speeds – 1 gigabit per second and up, rivaling fiber-optic broadband – cover exceedingly short ranges.
“Fifty-five cities with mmwave sounds impressive, but coverage is mere city blocks,” cautioned Lynette Luna, an analyst with GlobalData, in an email.
“It’s unlikely that the vast, vast, vast majority of Verizon subscribers will ever see millimeter wave anywhere near where they live or work,” concurred Avi Greengart, founder and lead analyst with Techsponential.
AT&T and T-Mobile also offer millimeter-wave 5G service, but in even fewer cities than the 55 Verizon now touts.
Verizon’s announcement today of a nationwide 5G network sharing the low-band frequencies of its 4G LTE service – the same approach AT&T and TMobile have taken to sell nationwide 5G – is also unlikely to upend anybody’s wireless experience.
“The phones will be roughly as fast as 4G,” predicted analyst Roger Entner of Recon Analytics.
The third kind of 5G – often described as the middle layer in a cake – relies on midband frequencies, between the massmarket dessert that is lowband 5G and the exquisite confectionery that is millimeterwave 5G. That layer, with a mix of significantly faster speeds and decent coverage, is only on the menu at T-Mobile.
“The iPhones will work the best on T-Mobile,” said Entner.
Emphasis on “will”: That carrier is still building out midband 5G with spectrum it got from buying Sprint, an effort that it said two weeks ago would reach “thousands of cities and towns” by year-end.
AT&T and Verizon have been buying up their own midband 5G spectrum so they can match their competitor. Apple’s hardware specifications for the new iPhones include many of these frequencies, but that doesn’t ensure that they will get commercial service on those bands.
“These phones will need to be certified to work on those frequencies,” Greengart warned. His advice: Expect a new iPhone 12 to support whatever 5G its carrier sells today, but not necessarily what they might light up in 2022 or 2023.
If this battle of the 5G bands doesn’t already sound like enough customer cacophony, consider another data point showing how much the wireless industry has left shoppers puzzled: A survey released last week by the Dulles, Virginia, network-analysis firm Global Wireless Solutions found that 49% of iPhone users across the major carriers thought they already had 5G phones.
Luna, with GlobalData, advised not getting hung up about 5G at all.
“I’m thinking that at this point 5G is not the main reason for buying a new smartphone,” she wrote. “There’s lots of nice camera features coming, which is always a draw.”