Gadgets

The distance at which 5G works reliably is a big part of this, but saturation is also a large contributor to the problem.

With the proliferation of smart watches, cell towers are getting overloaded as more and more people are now walking around with two devices trying to keep connection with towers.

A lot of people have non-cellular smart watches that only connect to their phone via Bluetooth, but an increasing number of people who cannot or do not want to afford an up-front purchase of a $200+ device will turn to their carrier to buy a smart watch just so they can pay over a couple years. Most people probably rarely, if ever, use the cellular connectivity of the smart watch, but the carrier isn’t going to subsidize the cost of a watch without an active plan, so the number of cellular-connected devices per person is growing, even though the smart watch connections go largely unused.

So I’m not going crazy

Living in LA I assumed service would be incredible. It's probably the shittiest service I've ever experienced.

Thank the lord. So glad these libral 5G gamma covid rays aren’t penetratin my brain.

Just kidding I am not southern.

I was on Sprint, then moved back to Nebraska, who is notoriously empty on the Sprint coverage map. Then they merged with T-Mobile, who also had terrible coverage here. It did not add up to anything more than terrible coverage combined. We get great reception at home and most places we go to, even if there are dead spots, and I'm on my mom's Over 55 plan with unlimited data, just can't be bothered to switch if no one offers an equal plan.

Heck, maybe if everyone else hates it and switches, speeds will go up for us!

who would've thought that banning the import of the most advanced 5g company's stuff would make 5g shit

I get 100mbps in a cabin middle of nowhere in a forest. I guess Finland is different.

Are we jamming ourselves?

If you're having issues with your cellphone, do this first.
For Apple: go to settings/general/transfer or reset/reset/reset network settings
For Samsung: go to settings/general management/reset/rest network settings
If you still having issues, call up your provider, ask them to:
Verizon: resync network
ATT: Cancel Registration
The other carriers will have something similar.

A lot of poor service has to do with your phone slowly de syncing. Good luck.

I was talking to my great uncle this morning and I noticed I was going on for a solid 30 seconds without an “mhm” and the call died. He immediately texted “what happened ed?”and I told him I had him on speaker and wasn’t touching my phone. Neither was he. Very weird stuff.

For me it hasn't so much felt like the reception itself is worse, but when I had my Pixel 3 and it was 4G I felt like my connection was pretty fast. I could still stream videos, YT, Twitch, Etc at 1080p+ no problem. Now, with my Pixel 7 where it's always trying to be on 5g, I can't watch a video on my phone at 1080p without it constantly buffering. Even if I'm in a relatively well connected area like my own home

I also don’t get why if I have 4G signal it is super slow, and if I have 3G it literally won’t send an iMessage. That’s all we had at one point, how is it so much less effective now?

Do what they did in Poland. Force all the carriers to allow new competitors to use their network while they build their's. And then you have competition, lower prices and better service.

It's because cell phone companies spend so much money on fighting stupid stuff in court, "like you can't put your wire on my pole." Instead of upgrading their infrastructure. That and doing everything they can to bottle neck people to make them pay for better service.

You'd think reception in the middle of Silicon Valley would be good, but no, I have better signal on a Swiss mountain top.

Try turning 5G off in your phone settings, it can make a big difference.

Didn’t they say something last year about some massive solar flare that might disrupt communications right around now?

Has been for years. I had to switch providers because Verizon became unusable in my area. I only have 2 bars as I write this.