Top 10 Things A 5G Phone Can Do For You

For starters, discount the media hype over 5G and ask yourself: what can it do for me that my 4G phone cannot?

Will it improve the way I live, work, and play?

The answer is, yes. But, to quote a popular American comedy show, "Curb your enthusiasm!"

Because 5G is not some new technology. It is just the incremental fifth step — albeit a big one — that mobile phone standards have undergone in 50 years.

The change will be palpable in two ways:

One, the speed at which 5G exchanges data will be about 10 times faster than what we have been used to with 4G.

It will also take data rates to 1 gigabit per second, which is 1,000 megabits per second (MBPS). Currently, for most of us, 10-20 MBPS is a big deal on phones. With 5G, you should be able to realise 1 GBPS on your handsets.

Ah! But does 5G not mean a top theoretical rate of 20 GBPS, you ask?

True, but underline the word ‘theoretical’. It’s never going to happen on your handset. If you’re thinking 5G at its practical best, think 1-2 GBPS on phones — for now.

Two, latency is a word to describe the time a packet of data which you send from your phone reaches the recipient, and vice versa.

You try to play a high-definition YouTube video and then wait and wait while the little blue ring keeps circling? That’s latency.

With 5G, you can forget such waiting. Latency, which is today around 60- 100 milliseconds (ms or one-thousandth of a second), will likely be cut to 10-20 ms. That means you will have the perception that things are happening in real-time, as they say.

With these twin improvements — speed and latency, here are the top 10 things a 5G phone can do for you:

1. High-speed downloads, of movies mostly, in seconds rather than in minutes.

You will read a lot about the lightning speed at which a 4K ultra high-definition movie can be downloaded on to your phone. This is mostly hype. Who wants a movie in 4K quality on a phone?

YouTube automatically downscales videos to around 300-360p when it senses you are viewing it on a hand phone. Anything higher and it won’t make any difference to the image; it will only eat into your data plan and storage.

2. Better personal healthcare. Smartwatches with health monitors measure heart rate, blood pressure, and, increasingly, oxygen saturation, even charting your ECG (electrocardiogram).

The wearer can be helped to relax and a nearby ambulance with a paramedic can automatically be sent to the location, thanks to GPS (global positioning system).

3. Multiplayer real-time gaming. Playing solo games on your phone is one thing. The challenge today is massive online multiplayer gaming with opponents who could be anywhere in the world.

Today’s dicey internet speeds combined with poor latency means the delay between making a move and seeing it take effect rules out such real-time play for most phone users.

All that will change with 5G on more phones. In the 50 or so countries where 5G is already available, one of the biggest changes seen was the sharp rise in multiplayer gamers on phones.

4. Education without boundaries. During the launch of 5G services by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week, Reliance Jio connected a teacher from a school in Mumbai with students in three different locations in Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Odisha.

It demonstrated how 5G facilitates education by bringing teachers closer to students, removing the physical distance between them.

5G is expected to remove a major brake on the connected classroom — lack of a speedy, steady internet connection.

5. Better shopping. It is widely predicted that the store of the future will eliminate queues at checkout. Indeed, it will eliminate checkouts altogether for registered 5G phone owners.

The reduced latency of 5G will ensure that computer vision technology can ‘see’ every item you put into your shopping cart and, when you exit the store, it will debit the total from your credit card or trigger a UPI (unified payments interface) alert and send you a message with the detailed bill.

6. Better e-shipping. Do you want to buy that dress online, but would like to see how it will look on you, how well it will fit? No need to visit a store for that.

Soon, you can download apps that will allow you to ‘try on’ every dress or suit available in the online store and look at a real-time image of yourself on the 5G phone or laptop.

7. Better video conferencing. The office e-conference or webinar has become a way of life for many professionals ever since the pandemic broke out. But the experience has rarely been good unless one used a PC (personal computer) or laptop.

With 5G on your phone, you will be relatively untethered since the data speeds ensure uninterrupted voice and video interactions.

8. Wire-free broadband for home. Many homes subscribe to a fixed-line fibre optic broadband connection, which is then used via a router to create a home Wi-Fi hotspot.

But many are denied this luxury because there is no local service provider, or the path to your home is too complicated.

Jio has announced what it calls Air Fibre: home broadband fed not by fibre but by a wireless 5G service. Airtel has also said it will do likewise. Together, they will widen the reach of broadband internet to Indian homes.

9. Immersive sports. Lovers of high-speed sports and live music events have been hitherto handicapped because much of the big-screen TV experience through dish or cable could not be replicated on a mobile phone.

5G, with its superior latency, will change all that: anything you view on a TV, you can see on your phone, with no jitters, no degradation.

That is because it relies heavily on virtual reality (VR), with real-world additions called augmented reality (AR). Both are difficult to achieve without high data speeds, now made possible by 5G.

Your handset will soon be able to access virtual tourist attractions, museum walkthroughs, and other meaningful enriching experiences.