What is 5Ge? And Why Is It On My iPhone?

Oh look - a new carrier indicator from AT&T that suggests that I’m receiving 5G to my iPhone! How cool is that! Boom!

Well, not really. It’s actually not true. Let’s break this lie down a bit.

5G refers to the “5th Generation” wireless communication standard which will offer theoretical speeds up to 1gbs - extremely fast, especially considering 4G LTE service offers around 30mbps (30 megabytes a second as compared to 1,000 megabytes a second).

The problem is that 5G is going to take a whole different set of hardware to transmit and receive 5G signals. That’s going to take a lot of time and capital investment by carriers like AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. 5G is supposed to roll-out nation-wide over the next couple of years. But it’s not here. Not yet.

So why am I being lied to? AT&T Senior VP for Wireless Technology Igal Elbaz defended AT&T’s 5Ge practices by arguing “what we’re trying to do is let [consumers] know that there is an enhanced experience in their market.” And yeah, they’re getting sued by the other carriers who say AT&T is misleading consumers .

You see, even though my iPhone says that I’m operating on a 5G network (E is AT&T marketing lingo for “Evolution”, it’s not even part of the 5G standard), it’s really not. Bummer-drag. It’s still on that 4G LTE network but using a mechanism to aggregate carrier signals (4x4 MIMO and 256 QAM) that offer a wee bit of a speed improvement (AT&T says an average of 40mbps with theoretical speeds up to 400mbps) but it’s not 5G, per se.

The 5Ge thing appeared on my iPhone XS after receiving the iOS 12.2 update, but it’s not really 5G. Have AT&T? If you have an older iPhone, or an iPhone XR, or older Android phone, you may not see the 5Ge indicator. That’s because those phones don’t support the signal aggregation thing I was just talking about. Also, you may not be in a market that AT&T has brought this whoopla to; AT&T seems to think they can roll this tech out to 400 markets by 2020.

So, sorry to swot your hopes like that but, hey, just keeping it real.

R

My Review of a Nextbit Robin

Around March 2016, I picked up a new phone. The Nextbit Robin.  I'd never owned an Android phone before but the Robin had some pretty compelling specs as compared to the iPhone 6s:

• 2ghz hexa-core Snapdragon 808

• 2680mAh fixed battery

• 3gb RAM and 32gb storage

• 13mp/5mp back/front camera

• WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, NFC, 4G

Plus, hey: the form factor and color options were pretty cool and retro. I got to admit that it's a pretty phone.

Robin started as a Kickstarter campaign and some of the overall concepts of the phone intrigued me, primarily the idea of a phone entirely focused on cloud-based storage model. Part of the phone's offerings in a 100gb cloud-based storage that the o/s sync's against to store things like photos, videos, and music that wouldn't be stored on the physical unit.

With local device encryption and Android Mobile Device Management Policies implemented through Google Apps, I felt I could make the phone reasonably secure.

Like I said: I'd never owned an Android phone before and I was interested in the phone from a technical-curiosity perspective, but I must admit: I recently purchased an Apple iPhone 7. It arrives tomorrow and I intend never to go back to Android. I had really thought Android was on-par now with iOS, but after my experience with it, I now feel that just isn't the case.

I didn't have the best experience.  In using it for six months:

• The Robin's o/s performance and hardware seemed to degrade.

• Battery life seemed to be eroded very quickly and it retains less than a five hour charge now - I have to charge it twice a day;

• I literally can't make a telephone call from the unit and have people hear me unless I turn on the speaker phone - even after reboots - I can't even figure out what happened there;

• Voice recognition is far inferior to Apple - it's like I have to fight with the narration to get my ideas down on the device;

• Application integration in Android seems tedious - so many permissions and allowances just to get anything accomplished;

• Vendor support for Android and Android Pay seemed unrealistically non-existent - my bank didn't support it as they supported iOS' ApplePay;

• Android updates took over 45 minutes to be applied to the unit; its cloud-based sync offered no superior functionality to Apple's sync services;

• I'd lose text messages - stuff never arrived to me or my messages never left the device;

• The chassis flexed and bent too easily, creating a warped line on the phone so that it didn't sit evenly with a table within a month.

Through my experience with it, I had to spend an inordinate amount of time troubleshooting the phone, restarting it, resetting its image, fiddling with settings. I spent a lot of time fighting with this phone. Likely, my problems were more related to Android than Nextbit's product itself. Inasmuch, I couldn't recommend this phone (perhaps any Android phone) to anyone who simply wants a working, secure appliance that takes minimal effort to work. If they want a hobby or to play around with a phone, this wasn't a bad unit - it was fairly fast - but it was so distracting that it compromised my ability to get work done; missing text messages was bad but the inability to complete a phone call was the last straw.

Perhaps you had a different experience with the Nextbit - I hope so. I really liked some of the ideas presented in the Kickstarter. However, I just can't say I'm an Android person, and my Nextbit experience was enough to solidify my ideas and satiate my curiosity: I'm going back to Apple.

Sync'ing Your Browsing Experience on Mobile Devices

In my consulting practice, I spend a great deal of time trying to show my clients how to securely access their email, contacts, calendars, and files on mobile devices.  As a Google for Work Partner, I show them how Google Apps for Work anywhere, at any time, on any device.  That's the benefit of working with an Apps Partner: Partners have the knowledge to ease the transition to cloud computing as well as the experience to make the most of it.

One overlooked benefit of cloud computing is synchronizing the browsing experience. When you're using a browser on your desktop computer, you're constantly entering information. Over time, that information gets cached (stored) in the browser's memory so it becomes easier to re-enter that information. The data just pops-up when it's requested. Things like form fields (names, addresses, telephone numbers), user login names and passwords, credit card numbers, and the like. Users will also install extensions that enhance their browsing experience; users will create bookmarks and favorite websites within the browser; the browser keeps a running history of the last pages that were visited so you can easily go back to something that you were looking at earlier. All of these capabilities ease the browsing experience and extend a degree of convenience to the user.

Well, why can't you take that experience with you? That's the idea behind Google Chrome. Chrome is Google's browser and it attempts to synchronize all of this information on any device that you use. On Android devices, Chrome is installed by default; on iPhones and iPads, Chrome can be downloaded from the App Store. Once you sign in, Google synchronizes all of that data to your mobile device, and, if changes are made on the mobile device, those changes are shared to your other computers running Chrome.

And don't worry: it's secure. This data is transmitted and stored encrypted on every device, and every user has the capability to remotely de-authorize devices and delete that data from their Google Account dashboard.

Even better, as a part of Google App's Mobile Device Management (MDM) features, small businesses have access to implementing Chrome Cloud Policies that allow us to implement technical restrictions and rules for how web browsing and content is accessed within the context of an organization.

So why do this browser sync stuff?

Well, it saves time. It adds convenience. With MDM, we can increase security and reduce risk. It makes it easier to take the web with you. In the context of small business, it can reduce learning curves and training costs for using web-based applications because it distributes the same experience across multiple devices; it increases productivity; it diminishes the cost of support. Simply put, browser synchronization makes it easier to get work done.

Want to know more? You're at the right place! Just get a hold of me - I'd be happy to answer your questions. Thanks for your time.

R