Almost 40% of owners turn off 5G in new smartphones

Although the number of smartphones with fifth-generation connectivity is growing rapidly, the technology is not as popular as one might expect. Many people have enough Wi-Fi connection during the day, some have enough 4G LTE, while others are simply not satisfied with the quality of the new type of connections. It turned out that about 40% of users turn off 5G altogether.

The study, conducted by the popular Android Authority portal, involved more than 1,300 respondents. Additionally, survey participants were encouraged to share their comments. As it turned out, 5G is always active only in 50.11% of respondents. The organizers did not rule out that some just do not yet know how to disable this very energy-consuming function.

Remarkably, there is a really large number of users who have 5G “always off” – their share was 39.4%, and they use smartphones without activating the new function in any circumstances. It is assumed that such users do not see the real benefits of 5G or the quality of communication of the next generation in the region where they live, while it leaves much to be desired.

Finally, 10.51% of respondents turn off 5G in cases where the corresponding signal is weak or the battery of the smartphone is almost empty.

5G technology is not as in demand as advertised

It is noteworthy that the poor signal quality was noted by many commentators; obviously, the technology has not yet reached a sufficient level of development. “I never turn off 5G. My Pixel 5 does it for me. ” Or “ If you’re driving, walking; or entering a building, don’t even think about turning on 5G as LTE will be faster. I turned off 5G on my iPhone to conserve battery power, ”are common comments. In addition, some users indicate that in tests 5G demonstrates high performance, and in real conditions it is much slower than LTE – when using 4G, pages load faster, YouTube does not require content buffering, etc. At the same time, users indicate that they are in areas “saturated” with 5G towers; and in theory, the connection should be excellent.

It is worth noting that the portal did not adhere to any strict standards of the survey; and everyone could participate in it without confirming the specified data. Here are some user comments:

• Yup yup yup: I have T-Mobile and use a Pixel 5. If I have 5G on I lose connection and spend most of the time trying to get the phone to connect. It’s nuts how it’ll show the 5G signal strong but nothing works. Spend hours a day turning on/off airplane mode restarting the phone. Easier to leave it as LTE preferred and not deal with it.
• Jeff Namhie: I never disable 5G. My Pixel 5 does it for me.
• AnySmarterIdRunLinux: I turned it off once — the day I got the phone.