fietsbob

Announced prices of the latest 5G phones with folding screens, to become a small tablet are staggering...

get in a lot of overtime pay to shop for those..

Seattle Forrest

Yeah because every phone in the future will cost that much.

,"&

-__

Marcus_Ti

Prices on phones only do one thing. Go up.

Top tier smartphone used to be $650...now they're $1100. Give it another 5 years, they'll cost $2,000USD.

bobwysiwyg

The induction charging is great. My wife and I picked up two with our Samsung S6's in 2015. Phones going strong and the induction chargers support fast charging even in the Otter Box. Wish there was a battery case that supported induction charging. Haven't found one yet.

Seattle Forrest

Android phones are available too. The top tier ones are just as crazily priced, but there are plenty of alternatives are every price point, and a thriving used market.

Marcus_Ti

Problem with non-top-tier phones...they're basically abandonware and unmaintained the second they hit retail. Only the top phones tend get any attention from developers either OEM or XDA.

CliffordK

I've been thinking about this some (during the last few days that I've been snowed in without power, and a rapidly dying cell phone battery).

Somewhere, I have my old Motorola Flip Phone... from the mid 90's. I discontinued service for a while, then when I was ready to re-enable service, the phone company refused to re-enable it, even though it seemed to work with the current network.

Analog. :EEK:

Reading about the 5G, it sounds like it may be fundamentally different from the 4G. If there is a serious attempt to bring widespread 5G across the country, then it could essentially replace 4G within a decade or so, and one might find one is severely limited in coverage if one maintains the old 4G. Will 4G be eventually discontinued like the old Analog?

If I could get the cell phone data plan promised with 5G (and have tethering opened up), I'd likely drop my land line, DSL, and current cell phone plan.

One might actually realize some savings with the conversion.

Will my next phone be 4G or 5G?

I wouldn't go out and buy a $1000 4G phone.

On the other hand, it might be worthwhile to drop $200 to $300 into a used phone that might be good enough for a few years, until the 5G network starts being widespread, and in the places that I'm likely to be.

I'd anticipate we'll see prices falling quickly, and some used 5G devices hitting the market shortly after introduction.

Has 5G actually been finalized yet? Data frequencies? Frequencies sold/purchased? I'd hate to get an expensive prototype that is obsolete by the end of the year.

Rollfast

Pay no attention to that 5G behind the curtain!!!

Marcus_Ti

A) I would never give up a landline ISP in the USA. Seriously. You're data throttled to such an extent you can scarcely keep Windows up to date, forget about all your other throughput needs/wants of streaming etc. Forget about what happens to your bill or your speeds when you go over your "allowance". If you can't even keep an OS security patched on it without being throttled/billed-for-it-it is a bad idea.

B) How "widespread" 5G ends up being depends on where you live. In my part of the country, unless you're on Verizon--the second you leave the I-80 corridor you lose not just 4GLTE data...you loose 3G data too....and you're lucky to get 1x roaming, even within farming/towns/communities. Said another way, a super-majority of the land in my state doesn't have 4G LTE speeds now, and doesn't have 3G either--and won't have 5G certainly. Can't vouch how things are in your area. Every summer when I go bike-touring in Nebraska, it is a given that I'm unplugged unless I find community wifi because there's no voice data service typically.

FCC is auctioning off more spectrum as we speak. With Verizon's own pet lawyer literally running the FCC...the cell companies basically get what they want. Of course, spectrum was freed up for 5G back in 2016

https://www.fcc.gov/5G

The final spec for 5G I believe is coming in April this year. Of course, that doesn't mean much here in the USA--carriers diluted 4G to such a point that what consumers call "4G" had very little to do with the ITU standards for simple speed/throughput NVM all the less noticeable aspects.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G

CliffordK

It really depends on how they roll it out.

At the moment, I have DSL.

150 K Bytes/sec, 1.5 M Bits/sec.

That is in theory, on a good day. Regularly in the early evenings, it drops down to about 50 K Bytes/sec. Sometimes even slower.

Windows updates?

You just better hope you don't get slammed with an update during those evening times when the net is just crawling. Start a download before bed... then find out that Windows rebooted 3/4 the way through the download, and your download is toast.

The details are still sketchy of what will actually be offered. But, they're talking about gigabytes of data downloads in seconds, or even a few minutes, rather than hours or days.

That would make my home DSL entirely obsolete. Even severely throttled has to be better than DSL at night when I start dropping downloads.

Are they planning to offer 1GB/sec, but limit one's monthly data to 2GB, or about 2 seconds worth of data?

Plus, I find myself on the road for about a week or two a year or so. Not enough to maintain a separate data plan, but long enough that being without data is a pain. It would really be nice if data was to follow me.

As far as land line, I lost power in our recent snow storm for almost 3 days. Cell data was almost non existent, and batteries went dead.

I had to go "old school" before the end of the power outage.



I have to work on future power redundancy. Solar? But, we had several days of clowdy/snowy weather. Other than a few brief openings, today may be the first day with significant sunshine since last Sunday... hopefully... the sky looks BLUE.

Marcus_Ti

Solar+ battery rig would help. And it isn't like clouds mean no-charge at all, just a drop in efficiency depending on how thick. Ofc, a generator would help too.


Being in the boonies doesn't help either. Out in FarmLandia, they're in basically the same pickle WRT home landline internet--and as cellular carriers see less than no money in servicing farm towns and ranches, they're left behind no matter what.

noglider 

Wow, I didn't realize Eugene is so left out. I don't think I could tolerate DSL.

Verizon used to have an edge over AT&T in coverage, but not any more, in my observation. I've been a satisfied AT&T customer for a long time. They're not cheap, but they're lower than Verizon. I left AT&T and moved around to a few carriers to try them out. I came back to AT&T.

Riveting

The new Samsung folding phone for ~$2000 may sound like a lot, but we were paying the same for a laptop with the same processor and video specs about 10 years ago. How much extra would you have paid 10 years ago to fit that same laptop in your pocket, put two 10 MPixel cameras on it, give it a 4K screen, and give it a 4G connection?

CliffordK

I think it depends on where one is at.

We seem to have a local semi-monopoly issue... in regions where there is competition (Comcast vs QWEST/Charter vs wireless options), then everyone gets upgrades.

In regions where there is no competition (single provider), then nobody gets upgrades.

noglider 

Same here. But the monopoly service is less crappy than yours. My neighbors in large apartment buildings have Verizon FIOS (fiber) service available. We, in a small building, have to settle with Spectrum cable modem service. Verizon doesn't want to invest in small buildings, because it doesn't pay off. The city told them they have to do better, and the litigation is lasting years, maybe decades. Poor neighborhoods are also underserved, despite the agreement between Verizon and the government.

Seattle Forrest

You should consider purchasing a free battery packs for times like this and other emergencies. I have a few, use them to keep my gps charged backpacking. A $15 one holds a full phone charge.

I bought a used Note 8 for not as lot of money even though it was the best Android phone available a year and a half ago, and will likely keep it until there's a compelling reason to upgrade. I couldn't bring myself to pay full price for 4G knowing that in Seattle that won't be future proof.

I use tethering (mobile hotspot) to work from home, with home sometimes being the park. T-Mobile gives me be 20 GB of tethering with my phone plan, $70 a month. I think I'm going to start commuting to a spot out in the national forest that has a river and picnic benches, and where I get reception.

Seattle Forrest

I've used low and mid tier Android phones. I don't remember what the situation with updates was, I'm sure you're right about that. One of the low end phones I had didn't have the hardware (compass) to run Google Sky Map. But that was years ago, and the phone was free for switching to a prepaid plan. That was the one thing I still remember hating about the experience.

CliffordK

My cell phone chews up batteries pretty quickly. I drained two external USB batteries.

One issue was that my cell reception was bad enough that it would take much longer to send a text than to actually type it.

I tried to send a couple of E-Mail attachments that utterly failed.

I have a couple of UPSs that I should have shut off as soon as the power went out, but I wasn't expecting days without service. I don't think they have much running on them, but I think they kick in the inverter and drain the batteries anyway.

I wonder if there are still customers somewhere without service around here. I should ask Mom if my second cousins have power.

I should probably talk to T-Mobile. I get about 30 seconds worth of tethering before it cuts out.

I just picked up a used Samsung Galaxy 3 that came with a "Zero Lemon" extended battery.

https://zerolemon.com/

Apparently they're no longer selling the Galaxy 3 batteries, but do have one for the Galaxy Note 8.

That has to be a HUGE phone.

Anyway, their battery cases are somewhat like the Otterbox cases, but with an added battery. Old versions replace the stock battery with the extended battery. New versions plug into the phone's USB port.

It does say that there is no wireless charging when using the ZeroLemon battery, but assuming it doesn't damage your device's USB port, at least regular USB use will only affect the battery pack, and not the phone.

CliffordK

The wireless revolution is on the verge
Verizon will soon blast your appt with microwaves and argue that there is no reason for hard wires.

CliffordK

I might look at that. Lately I've been dedicating one phone to the bike, which, of course, uses "location". My regular communication phone gets the location services turned off (unless an app requires it, then hopefully I can turn it off again). I'll turn WIFI off if I can also remember it.

I may go to a dedicated bike device shortly (Garmin?)

I got caught a little off-guard with the recent power outage and didn't get everything charged and dried before we lost power. So, I sucked down reserve power bringing devices back up to what I should have done the night before.

I'll look at the push notifications, although I think I only get very few notifications:
[list][*]Phone Calls[*]Text Messages[*]E-Mail (I think only once since last mail was read)[*]E-Bay (which has started becoming more intrusive).[/list

And, I try to keep myself off of SPAM lists. ]

It would be nice to still get the E-Bay notifications, but limit them to bid type auctions ending (no notices of items shipped, etc. I can even deal with E-Bay messages later).

CliffordK

Good note and food for thought, but this could well be bumping into a political debate.

I've put my response under Politics.

https://www.bikeforums.net/politics-...dividuals.html

CliffordK

So, have you been using the Galaxy Note?

More thoughts? How do you like it?

Time to start carrying a briefcase for your phone?



I was thinking about a Galaxy Note (probably a lesser model) for bike touring, but I'm not sure I'd want to lug it around with me for general use.

Seattle Forrest

@CliffordK,

On the whole, I like it. The giant screen is easier to read, they put nifty software in to take advantage of the size, and because it's so big, it would make a great mapping unit. Unfortunately it barely fits in my pants pockets, and I'm a little anxious about losing it one day.

I barely use the S Pen. It seems like there's so much potential for the stylus to be useful, but ... it seems a little awkward in practice. Maybe that'll change in time, so check in with me in a month or so.

How would you mount it on the bars? If possible, I feel like having it sideways (landscape instead of portrait) would be more stable and maybe easier to read given the viewing angle.

Rollfast

Where have you been? Centurylink took over Qwest (old baby Bell US West and formerly Mountain Bell here) years ago. My service goes back to the local Malheur Bell and Farmers Mutual Telephone Co. in the mid '80s and then early 2000s.

PS There is always satellite.

Rollfast

I once gave a friend's mom a fully working Kaypro II with the floppies. She's passed now but she was one of the earliest computer sellers and educators in our area. I still prefer and use Word Perfect over Office thanks to her!