
Apple knows 5G is about infrastructure, not mobile phones (2018) - evo_9
https://www.cringely.com/2018/11/21/apple-knows-5g-is-about-infrastructure-not-mobile-phones/
======
chowells
Wow. There's some truth in there, but a lot of nonsense. Especially in the
analogies. If you can't see the difference between 60Hz and 144Hz when a small
object (mouse pointer) is moving quickly against a static background, you're
not paying attention. And 144Hz is amazingly far short of the actual
perceptual limit in that case. Consider the difference between what it looks
like to move your fingertip around and move a mouse pointer around at high
speed. I haven't done tests to measure, but I'd be surprised if I mistook a
500Hz sampling rate for continuous movement.

This is all because there are edge cases for which your brain can make use of
significantly more information than it can directly identify. Just because a
pixel has a smaller arc than your retina can distinguish doesn't mean that its
contribution to the image isn't recognized. "Retina" screens are still far
below the level at which there would stop being advantages to increasing
resolution. (Yes, there would be huge disadvantages too, and I'm not saying we
need higher resolutions.)

What are the odds that there are edge cases where the extra bandwidth of 5G
would actually matter? Seems pretty close to 100% to me. Some of those edge
cases might be as easy to find as moving your mouse pointer rapidly. Maybe
going to a sporting event?

~~~
snazz
I do wonder what the limit is in visual “framerate”. Normal light seems very
smooth, but I can easily pick up on individual “frames” if I wave my finger
under an older fluorescent light (which should be running at 50-60Hz to match
mains power if I understand it correctly).

~~~
baroffoos
The eyes don't have a framerate. A video at 60fps looks smooth but a single
black frame on a white video is visible even at much higher fps. If I move my
mouse quickly in circles on a 60fpx screen it looks like I have 10 individual
cursors in a ring but if I move my finger quickly in circles it looks like I
have a slightly transparent ring shaped finger with no gaps in between, I can
see the smooth curve of the path that my finger took which would have to be
captured at an incredibly high framerate to display on a monitor.

~~~
psandersen
A bit off topic but I've been thinking there has to be a better way of
handling this at the LCD controller level here...

Currently, a 60hz screen isn't perfect and pixel overdrive will be used to
reduce motion blur. In effect, there are more 'unique intermediate frames'
being displayed as the system tries to approximate the discrete input frames
physically. The actual blur on fast-moving content on a modern screen is
huge...

Ignoring latency for a moment, if a controller has the previous and next frame
plus motion vectors and knowledge of the precise pixel response and decay
curves for the monitor... it should be possible to continuously adjust the
current/voltages(?) to every pixel to better approximate what a much higher
refresh rate low motion blur panel would look like on high fps content. Can't
remove blur but can make motion continuous rather than a stair step. A kind of
smart motion interpolation + overdrive implementation.

The assumption is the higher fps the more linear the motion is frame to frame.
30 to 60fps interpolation should have more noticeable abnormalities than 120
to 1000hz.

~~~
londons_explore
I'd like to see a demo of this...

I doubt one could make it work for computer graphics (since motion vectors
aren't easily accessible), but when displaying video the results could be
good, although users seem to dislike content with interpolated generated
frames, and perhaps your proposed tech could get a similar response.

~~~
psandersen
Arguably computer graphics are the best candidate since many engines already
have a velocity buffer for effects like temporal anti-aliasing and motion
blur... would need API integration though.

My hunch is motion interpolation is preferred at high fps. E.g. a high action
scene at 30 fps will need a lot more information to be filled in and has
likely already been mastered with the target frame rate in mind (camera
shutter speed etc).

But 120hz or more content will have very little motion between frames, and
this motion will be far more linear (e.g. a finger might move 1cm between
frames, but doesn't bend so less motion artefacts).

So 120hz content upscaled to 960hz+ would be much closer to native 960hz
content and preferable to displaying at the original 120hz. A logical
implementation would be VR headsets with a built-in DSP.

------
jimtaguchi
Just to get this out of the way, I see Apple shares currently presenting a
huge buying opportunity. A good Christmas quarter will regain that lost 20
percent, and I don’t see any reason why Apple shouldn’t have a good Christmas
quarter.

Yikes...

~~~
drumhead
Yes, that comment was a not well timed at all.

~~~
ianai
Prediction is at best a fools game. I wish people were more forgiving. Just,
of course, be extra careful when predictions involve your money.

~~~
rictic
If predictors state their confidence and make falsifiable predictions then
they can be fairly graded and compared. This is especially true when many
other people are also making predictions about the same event.

Cringely is the stereotype of the pundit who makes a lot of really confident
predictions that are just absurdly, comically wrong, over and over and over.
But he's fun to read, so he gets read. Same as the analysts that you see on
the news.

~~~
beatgammit
I love watching Jim Cramer, but I never take his stock picks. I like his
analysis and use it as a representation of the majority of household investors
looking at the short term. I find that entertaining, and I like watching the
movement of stocks after his analysis.

However, when I make my own investments, I do more thorough that watching a
guy make quick-fire guesses.

------
gumby
What a strange article.

The real issue is that 5G in 24–86 GH region has a range of about 1500 m,
unlike LTE (and 5G in the LTE bands up to 6 GH) with a much longer range. So
think of 5G more as a small-cell mesh technology -- I doubt you'll see it
outside urban centers except for marketing -- your "5G" phone will continue to
work but only at LTE speeds & bandwidth.

~~~
1stranger
It's my understanding that 5G will also be used in the 600mhz spectrum at
least by T-Mobile so will have the longer range with improved bandwidth and
latency of 5G.

~~~
gumby
I’m afraid at the lower frequencies you’re not going to see much improvement
due to the laws of physics.

------
camillomiller
“Just to get this out of the way, I see Apple shares currently presenting a
huge buying opportunity. A good Christmas quarter will regain that lost 20
percent, and I don’t see any reason why Apple shouldn’t have a good Christmas
quarter.”

Ouch

~~~
3chelon
My exact thought.

------
thatguyagain
People are talking about 5G from a consumer perspective here, which is fine,
but I'm pretty sure the real benefits will first be seen in industrial
manufacturing and autonomous vehicles. Perhaps gaming as well. The latency is
a big factor.

So yes, you can already watch netflix on your phone, but not every
technological step forward is about your individual entertainment :)

For reference, just look at what Ericsson is doing:
[https://www.ericsson.com/en/5g/what-
is-5g](https://www.ericsson.com/en/5g/what-is-5g)

~~~
usermac
Thank you. That was the clearest video explanation I could have asked for.

~~~
thatguyagain
Maybe you saw it, but there's a video below the first one on that page which I
think illustrates the latency difference pretty good too!

------
mr_toad
> But sometimes writers looking for a story don’t fully understand what they
> are talking about

Or they’re just talking about what their audience wants to hear.

Without actually making a story up. Usually.

------
joecool1029
I'm still looking for whitepapers on 5G. Has a standard even come together
yet, or are we mostly just talking about high-band spectrum use that will be
stopped by leaves?

The carriers are just going to push a software update to change the indicator
for LTE-A to 5G, I think AT&T already did that...

~~~
Foivos
A big part of 5G are deployments at sub-6Ghz frequencies.

So for this part, you do not have to worry about 5G being short range or
easily blocked. Compared to LTE you will still get benefits like flexible
numerology (ie. lower latency) and full duplex (ie. increased bandwidth).

The name 5G is more of a marketing term rather than an accurate technical
description, just like the term "retina display". Different vendors can market
the same technology very differently. For example, HSPA was marketed as 3.5G,
3G+, Turbo 3G, 3.7G, 3.9G and even 4G. It did not help that HSPA evolved a bit
during its lifetime. I would not be surprised if operators arbitrary decide to
call whatever they are using 5G.

~~~
opencl
AT&T has already decided to rebrand existing LTE infrastructure as "5G E" and
label the new mm-wave stuff as "5G+".

------
pjc50
> All networking will be wireless and truck rolls will end forever. No more
> cable guy.

People have been saying this for years, but I'm not yet convinced; I don't
hear too many people giving up wired for 4G. The overall download limits must
surely be tighter?

What 5G _might_ solve is cell congestion. There are already places in central
Edinburgh where I can have full "bars" and no bandwidth, because it's too
heavily contended with the other thousand people in the same cell now that
everyone has a phone that's polling all the time.

------
United857
The author isn't thinking ahead enough. We might be reaching human perceptual
limits for rectilinear 2-D displays -- but what about stereoscopic, 360,
lightfields, ...? There's plenty of future formats for content that will drive
bandwidth and resolution improvements for a long time to come.

~~~
MrKristopher
That all comes out in 2019?

~~~
stuntkite
I have a streaming volumetric video chat prototype. I plan on launching
private beta this month. I also have a portable hardware display that I guess
you could call a phone that I'm working on. I expect it to be testing with a
small group by Q2. I'm petty excited about 2019. 5G makes things a lot easier
and really increases how people can interact with the content.

Just for reference, streaming point cloud is about 100mb/sec. You can compress
"frames" with the totally unproven Google Draco product, but there's nothing
quite like mpeg for the format. I guess it's really hard to call it a format
since there's no real standard at current.

------
skunkworker
For me personally the jump from 4g(LTE) to 5G is much less apparent than from
3G to 4G. It's not unlike the upgrades in video technology.

2G -> 3G -> 4G -> 5G

VHS -> DVD -> Bluray -> UHD

While the jump is significant between each level, the apparent improvements
are diminishing. On LTE I can watch Netflix, live tv, Facetime, use the
internet as I would at home on Wifi.

Using the internet on the go (mobile) won't see that much of an apparent
improvement (unless you are needing high bandwidth connectivity), but I could
definitely see a case if this was used to push gigabit level wireless speeds
in hard to install/dense residential locations.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
I think the biggest change won’t be the faster speeds that 5G will deliver;
but that it will necessarily mean the carriers will have to significantly
raise their bandwidth limits beyond the current 1-10GB/mo limits (even
“Unlimited” plans have soft caps and speed limits).

Kinda like how 3G meant iMessage, Skype and Hangouts rendered SMS obsolete so
carriers stopped charging per-message - I think 5G will mean more people will
stream other video streaming services (this skirting the controversy over
zero-rating Netflix and YouTube to the detriment of their competitors).
Hopefully this will also mean that people in underserved rural areas stuck on
atrociously slow DSL can get decent service without needing to compromise with
a high-latency satellite connection or a low-transfer-limit LTE hotspot.

~~~
perlpimp
Herein lies the question, if we actually prefer to text instead of
vid/facetime/etc how this would be relevant. Streaming applications from
powerful server might be a thing though.

------
niftich
I'm not familiar with the author but I agree with their first few points. But
I feel there's more to it than that. Apple can afford to hold off on 5G
because the networks aren't there, the "5G" term as an industry-sanctioned
umbrella for related innovations is firmly in the hype-phase of the hype cycle
and its various features are intentionally and unintentionally conflated (both
at the origin by industry and along the way by writers and pundits in media),
and because Apple is an integrated hardware-software platform distinct from
the only other mobile alternative, and is therefore more resilient against a
hypothetical consumer exodus over not supporting something no one can yet use
anyway. Unlike consumers, some investors may see it differently, but Apple
isn't in dire financial straits either.

As for use-cases that 5G will enable, industry groups are hopeful for nearly
every scenario that involves sending and receiving data. But technical fitness
and business models are different questions entirely. And if we're talking
about the kinds of hardware Apple currently makes, 5G is to be understood
solely in terms of wireless carriers a customer can subscribe to a plan for,
not in some intricate use-case for machine-to-machine communication.

Unlike a more invested party and component-maker like Qualcomm, Huawei Nokia,
or Samsung, their customer base isn't industry at large, but people who want a
tablet-like device to carry with them. They can punt this to the next
generation of phones or the one after that, they can wait out the network to
be built, for the insane number of access points to be deployed, and perhaps
even until their feud with Qualcomm winds down, and the state of play (solely
in terms of mobile data and its utility for a smartphone) isn't going to be
running circles around them for a while.

------
jsgo
...because this story presumes that 5G support is somehow vital to mobile
phones. It isn’t.

...

But the important question to ask here is why that speed difference matters
for mobile phone users? It doesn’t. 5G is no killer app.

———-

Stopped reading at this point.

1) based on quotes from various providers, one big benefit of 5G is in
bandwidth. I don’t personally know how (beyond less time to download something
opens up bandwidth for other devices quicker), but that’d seem to be a big
deal. The whole network saturation issues I hear about (T-Mobile is great in
my area and I’ve never experienced throttling issues or the like, but I’ve
heard stories).

2) What other killer feature can a phone have at this point? I’ll give credit
to phones that flip out into tablet like displays, but I think just about any
truly compelling innovation is pretty done in these devices.

3) Anecdote time. I live in a neighborhood where we spent 5 years fighting a
provider that maintained an exclusive easement over TV/Internet. This
provider’s speed was 10Mbps on a great day and their peak hours were, per
their support staff, “between 4pm and 1am” where you were lucky to get
Facebook to load (and people sharing pictures/video which seems to be the big
use case was a painful experience to be on the receiving end of). Finally, we
got out of it and while waiting for Spectrum to lay their infrastructure, I
was using T-Mobile’s International Plus add-on as a hotspot for desktop,
laptop and TVs and it was fantastic (relative to what we had). Mobile LTE/5G
could very easily serve those in similar situations and if infrastructure is
in place, rural areas.

I’m of the mind that I won’t buy a 5G device until the infrastructure is there
so I’m okay with what I read to a point, but it seemed like a case of making a
myriad excuses after a point and tired of it quickly.

------
Nokinside
5G home routers will come before first. It's seems that the plan is to get
early adopters to replace cable.
[https://www.verizonwireless.com/5g/home/](https://www.verizonwireless.com/5g/home/)

~~~
baroffoos
I can see it happening in Australia where the internet is universally shit
unless you are in the lucky 1% of areas. My office is in the center of the
city and has 10Mbit/s down. We would easily be in range of any future 5g
infrastructure.

------
JustSomeNobody
> Much of this spectrum has been bought-back by wireless carriers from TV
> license holders. We’ll see this trend continue over the next decade or so
> until there will be no over-the-air TV left at all. At that point you’ll
> still be able to watch all the same TV, but it will be over 5G, instead.

Now this is interesting. I wonder if this means the rural and the poor will
have to give up on free[0] television.

[0] Ad supported.

Edit: Not trying to imply _only_ the rural and poor enjoy free tv. Cord
cutters do too. My concern is that they won't be able to afford the new
alternative or it just won't be available.

------
becauseiam
Maybe I am biased, but live TV is not going to die completely. News, sport,
concerts, lotto results, and other timely things will continue to have demand.
IP is a terribly broken and inefficient medium to deliver this to the
audience, and the internet as it stands today with what we deliver simply does
not have the capacity to survive a "traditional TV switch off". Some
broadcasters are testing with deploying onto 5G with various trials, but most
appear to be doing an all IP operation, and handing over the controls of
deployment from the incumbent transmission networks who charge on site/power
and other performance metrics, to telcos who will probably charge both the
broadcaster _and_ the end user per packet, as well as introducing more
middlemen (CDNs) to further create inefficiencies.

There's a lot to work out before Cringely's "utopian" 5G network to rule them
all can actually exist.

~~~
bdhess
TV delivered over IP is not the same as TV delivered over the internet. When
your ISP is the same entity as your TV carrier, the traffic doesn't have to
travel over the internet. Comcast is already doing this with X1 and Verizon is
already doing this with Fios.

~~~
topranks
Yeah exactly. Lots of cable TV networks are all-IP, using multicast to
distribute the signal.

But the previous post is 100% correct in saying that “video over unicast on
the internet” is massively inefficient compared to current broadcast
techniques.

People want Netflix-style video on demand though. Outside live news & sports
that will kill broadcast TV.

~~~
londons_explore
What seems 'horribly inefficient' today is usually the future.

Sending cartoons as raster rather than vector data is also horribly
inefficient, yet every TV network does it.

Sending music as MP3 is horribly inefficient compared to the original notes in
midi form, yet everyone does it.

Taking a photograph of your electric meter rather than writing down the number
is millions of times more wasteful of space, yet people do it.

~~~
muraiki
> Sending music as MP3 is horribly inefficient compared to the original notes
> in midi form, yet everyone does it.

If you've ever played an instrument that isn't a bad synthesizer, you'll know
why everyone does this.

------
signa11
fta

''' The whole idea behind 5G is that it will allow the wireless carriers to
totally eat the lunches of wireline telephone, cable and Internet service
providers while also supplanting broadcast TV. '''

well, most of the wireline operators have a _huge_ presence in the wireless
world as well, think at&t, vzw, sprint, vodafone etc. of the world.

afaik, 5g has primarily been about better specturm utilization. core-network
has not really changed significantly since 3g -> 4g transition (where it i.e.
core, became an all ip network). sure, you keep hearing about things like
control-plane user-plane separation (cups) etc. but that is just a marginal
improvement over what has already been deployed/running...

------
ninedays
Can anyone tell me in which country I can use 5G network as a regular
consumer? I don't really understand the author point if there is nowhere I can
access this tech.

Also, having a 5G network with lots of restriction won't bring much usage. I
prefer to have a good 3G unlimited connection than 5GB at 4G speeds. Same
thing for 5G. If we cannot have unlimited (or close to unlimited) data then
new usage cannot really be developed.

Edit : typos.

~~~
mrweasel
>I don't really understand the author point if there is nowhere I can access
this tech.

It's that his point? Others complain that Apple doesn't have a 5G iPhone
ready. Part of Cringelys point is that it doesn't make sense to penalize Apple
for the lack of 5G support, when there's no infrastructure available.

------
kevin_b_er
None of the supposed speed improvements matter in the US due to widespread
usage caps and throttling.

Latency? That sounds nifty for something like video confrencing. Alas, the
bandwidth caps are there anyways.

Faster speed just means a random website can burn through your Verizon cap
that much faster. "Unlimited" has and is a willful lie and deception by
wireless companies. The fine print always says the opposite.

------
GuB-42
No excuses to Apple.

First, 5G is the future, it may not be important at first but it will
eventually change. Is a bit of future proofing too much to ask of a high end
smartphone?

Second, 5G is not just about maximum bandwidth, it also gives you access to
less saturated frequencies.

The lack of 5G is a very big deal, especially when smartphones vendors
struggle to find even minor differentiating factors.

~~~
FPGAhacker
I agree about future-proofing a phone from the consumer point of view, but it
would decrease Apple's margins or increase the price of an already really
expensive phone for no current benefit.

On the technical side, I think 5G has a serious problem of being blocked by
just about anything at those frequencies. I'm sure the RF wizards will get it
sorted out, but I imagine early adopters are going to suffer with garbage
signal indoors.

~~~
niftich
More on this: upcoming 5G implementation proposals, such as 3GPP's '5G NR',
have bands [1] in the UHF, SHF, and EHF range, out of which the EHF/mmWave
bands are most susceptible to environmental attenuation, but they're also the
ones capable of the highest throughput. The UHF bands are rather similar to
LTE, and deliver only a modest improvement.

So really, 5G is a somewhat abstract standard by ITU-T that specifies
requirements, and the industry then delivers a suite of technologies that are
deployed together and marketed as 5G. In the case of 4G, the same was true at
first, but then non-confirming LTE was cobbled together as a series of
progressive enhancements of existing tech by the industry, and marketed as
"4G", co-opting the term in consumers' minds and making the prior formal
definition irrelevant.

With the hype and anticipation over 5G rapidly intensifying, there's a chance
the same might happen again, as networks are eager to brand any progressive
enhancement as a true differentiating factor. It's enabled by the term "5G"
having cachet with consumers, yet its technical specs are relatively obscure
so average customers lack meaningful information and recourse to challenge the
marketing.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR_frequency_bands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR_frequency_bands)

------
srikanthkalin
Just to get this out of the way, I see Apple shares currently presenting a
huge buying opportunity. A good Christmas quarter will regain that lost 20
percent, and I don’t see any reason why Apple shouldn’t have a good Christmas
quarter.

------
z3t4
i remember a call from someone trying to sell me 3G internet. she had a very
hard time understanding why the bandwidth they offered wasn't enough, i
already had a fiber connection. its nice to only have to wait a second when
downloading packages using apt-get, downloading free OS distributions,
container images, training sets, software modules and dependencies, raw
images, backups, installing a game from Steam, etc.

------
saisanthosh
There need not be any limit. The eye can pick up a of a single photon in the
right context. It doesn't get any briefer than that.

------
tlrobinson
(2018)

~~~
skilled
It's over. What about it?

~~~
NullPrefix
Articles from previous years are postfixed with (year)

~~~
skilled
That's the joke...

------
hellofunk
I read an article a couple of months ago where numerous scientists signed a
letter proclaiming significant health risks to ubiquitous 5G in society, that
the waves are apparently quite dangerous to health? Anyone know anything about
that?

I think this was it:
[https://www.saferemr.com/2017/09/5G-moratorium12.html](https://www.saferemr.com/2017/09/5G-moratorium12.html)

~~~
zw123456
One of the primary premises of cellular technology is Frequency re-use (time
division is as well, combined called OFDMA) but just in terms of Freq re-use,
if you want to increase the capacity of a cellular system then you want to
reduce the size of a cell site. The way this is done is by reducing the power
level (also lowering the elevation of antennas). When you reduce the power
level then adjacent cell sites can re-use the same frequencies without
interfering with each other.

When people hear about 5G where plans call for 300 meter cell spacing, they
panic thinking that the power levels will increase, but in reality it does
not. Because the transmitter power levels are reduced commensurately.

A lot of people (even scientists) do not understand this basic concept.
Current spacing and power levels are 2Km at 40Watts (typical but varies) in an
urban area for low and mid band (1ghz - 3ghz). If you reduce the spacing to
300M and 5W, then you really have not changed the energy density. But what you
accomplish is getting more capacity by enabling more re-use of frequency
spectrum.

The numbers are different for different bands due to different propagation
properties, but that is the basic concept.

~~~
hellofunk
I was referring to this:

[https://www.saferemr.com/2017/09/5G-moratorium12.html](https://www.saferemr.com/2017/09/5G-moratorium12.html)

The concerns seemed legit, I wonder why the industry is either not paying
attention to them, or not at least responding to the concerns

~~~
Junk_Collector
People respond to these concerns constantly. This was the same group against,
2G, 3G, 4G, wireless power meters, etc. In fact, The response from the
DIRECTORATE-GENERAL HEALTH AND FOOD SAFETY of the European Union was linked on
the site.

Of course, the SaferEMR folks dismiss it and all of the safety testing and
health risk studies that have been done. Their official stance is that we
haven't demonstrated that there couldn't be some unknown mechanism by which
EMR could negatively impact human health so we should curtail all wireless
technology until we have proven that there is no possible down side. This is
of course impossible.

