5G Explained in Layman Terms & What you should Know

 hi guys this is shubahm and in this article let's talk about 5g there's a lot of confusion about 5g so in this article i'm going to try to explain to you in layman terms 5g and what matters to you and hopefully by the end of this video you'll have a far better understanding of 5g and specifically if you're buying a new smartphone that has 5g there are some things that you need to note so let's talk about that and again if you think about 5g most of us actually think about just speeds yes we will be getting faster speeds with 5g but that's not the case every time and 5g 

is just not about speeds so what is 5g 5g is technically an improvement over the existing 4g lte networks and this 5g implementations will happen soon and will stay for the next 10 odd years with us so let's talk about what are the improvements and the first improvement that you will see with the 5g connection is known as latency and what do you mean by latency latency is the delay of one packet from here to the other play and in fact if you do a lot of gaming on your smartphone etc you might notice that lag that is cost because of high latency and uh

you might say yes i'm able to perfectly do gaming on my existing 4g smartphone yes you can do that and but the latency the average latency on a 4g lte connection is about 50 milliseconds and guys this is almost the best case scenario it's generally a lot higher but on 5g they are aiming to load this latency to as low as one millisecond for real-time communication uh they haven't achieved that for example i was reading some papers from verizon they already implemented 5g in us and they are experiencing a latency of about 28 to about 30 milliseconds so yes we haven't reached that magic number of one millisecond yet but hopefully with future networks uh

 the latency should lower and definitely it will be it is actually currently even faster and better latency than 4g so that's a big improvement another thing is that 5g uh what do you say networks will allow us to have a lot more devices in a particular area and let me give you a very crude example uh for example with 4g uh in a one square kilometer area generally uh it can support about one lakh devices with 5g they're claiming that they can increase this by 10x that is about 10 lakh devices so again we can have a lot more devices in a particular for example to give you a very crude example uh if you have ever been to a stadium or something right now because of covered we can't do that but if you have ever let's say last year you went to a stadium and

 stuff and you're trying to access your smartphone on a cellular network you might have noticed that the data speeds are so sluggish it might hardly connect and that is because it simply cannot uh connect to that many devices this should actually be solved with 5g it will support a lot more devices simultaneously connecting and they achieved this because of a lot of new technologies uh actually most of the smartphones that are 5g enabled will support

 mimo and even multi-user mimo have their 2x2 4x4 or even 8x8 antenna configuration and they also use beamforming and other technologies to uh get higher throughput so again the thing of congestion that we call that we frequently experience in very crowded areas should be a thing of past with 5g now let's talk about the 5g bands and they are actually divided into probably two uh that sub six gigahertz and the millimeter wave and to give you an idea uh the millimeter wave is technically far faster uh that is the faster implementation of 5g that speed test

 that we see one gigabit 1.5 gigabits etc are all a millimeter wave but millimeter wave is not practical in every area i'll talk about it why ah the other part is the sub six gigahertz band and uh again this is also divided into actually uh quite a few it's actually known as fr1 and in fact if we talk about the bands it ranges for 410 megahertz to all the way to about six gigahertz in fact they are also trying to implement it up to seven gigahertz but officially 410 

megahertz to about six gigahertz even they might increase it up to seven gigahertz and this is also now further divided uh below 2000 megahertz and above 2.5 gigahertz in fact the above 2.5 gigahertz is known as the mid band and to give you an idea why are they doing this different different bands even sub six gigahertz let me give you a very crude example of wi-fi routers we all have it in our houses offices and if you recall we have the 2.4 gigahertz band that is the regular wi-fi that we call and if you notice the range of the 2.4 gigahertz man is actually pretty good but the speeds that you get are just average not super super fast uh now if you have the 5

 gigahertz wi-fi band the speeds that you get are far better in fact i would say two three times better than 2.4 gigahertz but if you notice the five gigahertz span wi-fi range is a lot less that's the thing uh the sub six gigahertz uh also uh we have the same thing uh below thousand megahertz implementation what they have for the sub six gigahertz will have a lot longer range but if we move to the higher bands uh that is the mid band the range will reduce but again

 we'll get higher speeds but still i would say so if we have implementations of what do you say sub 1000 megahertz the speeds raw speeds that we'll get might not be faster than 4g lte but again you do get advantages of 5g for example low latency and far more devices can be achieved i feel in india uh we might have the mid band that is the above 2 for 500 megahertz to about six gigahertz uh so this will give us actually decent speeds and couple of hundred megabits uh and uh we can we can get decent uh range so i feel in india uh we will be getting a mix of

 this mid band so again but it's advisable if you're buying a new smartphone to support all the popular multiple what do you say 5g bands because some areas might they might implement what you say if area is not that crowded and they need that range they might implement under thousand megahertz uh but in urban areas etc mostly uh we will get the mid band that is around 2500 megahertz to about six gigahertz and now let's talk about millimeter wave uh

 this is also known as an fr2 and um it's actually 30 gigahertz onward technically uh from 24 to 50 gigahertz and as i've given you that example of the wi-fi router also that five gigahertz is actually very fast but again the range of the five gigahertz band is simply not that great that's the same case even with the millimeter wave in fact the millimeter wave signal strength is so weak that even if a tree is there in the middle uh it will actually block the signal in fact if it's raining heavily the signal will be blocked and in fact if you have walls and stuff uh it will simply not penetrate so uh millimeter wave yes you can get very high speeds uh you can get those gigabit 

speeds on millimeter wave but the problem is the range is simply not that great and it can be easily blocked in fact due to bad weather or even if a tree etc any obstacle is there it'll get blocked uh so these uh isps if they want to implement millimeter wave they have to put a lot of mini towers and that becomes very very expensive in fact uh every couple of 100 meters they might have to put uh small towers and they it should have actually line of sight uh that's why yeah in u.s some of the vendors are implementing millimeter wave but it's a combination 

of millimeter wave and sub six gigahertz span but the problem with the millimeter wave is that if you are indoors and stuff you will hardly get the signal because it needs that line of sight and the signal can get disrupted and that is the reason that we will see a lot more six sub six gigahertz band uh five g implementation throughout the world uh now let's also talk about uh what do you say uh the wi-fi bands as i've told you uh you're sorry here the 5g bands that

 i've mentioned as you notice we have various uh what do you say band for example in sub six gigahertz we have below thousand megahertz then mid band etc and uh so your smartphone also if they say it's 5g enabled needs to actually support all those bands to take advantage of it for example let's say uh if you're in your area your your isp that is atel

or jio is providing 5g on let's say uh 4 gigahertz band or whatever and if your smartphone technically yes let's say it supports 5g and simply it does not have that band you will not get 5g so again if you're buying a new smartphone now make sure that you check what 5g bands are supported because i've seen this many of the reviews are simply not talking about it for example recently uh uh it was the case with the oneplus not uh it is they claim that it's a 5g capable phone but it supports just one band of 5g that is 79 and in fact that is sort of useless because even in the same city uh isp might be offering what do you say 5g on different multiple bands due to the reasons

 that i have mentioned in fact due to the licensing agreement one city might have one band another city might have another band that's the same case right now with 4g so a smartphone if they say is 5g capable it needs to actually support multiple bands of 5g otherwise there's a very very high chance though if you say your phone has 5g it might simply not work and i've seen this even with the oneplus 8t that also supports just one band of 5g in the sub 6 gigahertz and only one band of 5g in the millimeter wave so if you're buying the new smartphone check check check what 5g brands are supported for example recently i was happy with the motorola g5g smartphone it supports the sub 6 gigabyte and it supports all the 11 bands so in fact anywhere in the world where we have sub 6 gigahertz it will actually work so it's important to check if you're

buying a new smartphone right now a check what 5g bands are supported many of the other reviewers etc will simply not mention about this but as this is important if you plan to keep that smartphone for example you're buying it now for next three years this is going to be important also the another thing is that as i've told you that sub 6 gigahertz band we have and the millimeter wave that we have uh the thing is that with millimeter wave only a few smartphones particularly on the android front only a few uh actually smartphones are supporting the millimeter wave for

 example the high-end flagships the snapdragon 865 and the upcoming snapdragon 888 will support what do you say millimeter wave but again check what bands of millimeter wave they are supporting so that is important uh in fact even if we talk about the latest iphones that is the iphone uh in india the variant that is being sold only supports the sub six gigahertz band not the millimeter wave only uh the variant that is sold in us is supporting the millimeter wave as well as sub six gigahertz band and looks like worldwide we'll have a lot more implementation of the sub six gigahertz brand and even in a country like india which is very fast uh very a very big um

 i would say i was talking uh we will have implementation of sub six gigahertz a lot more yes you might have some pockets of millimeter wave maybe in a dense commercial area or a shopping complex or a park uh where you can experience but again there'll be very small pockets of millimeter wave because it's very very expensive to implement proper uh what do you say millimeter wave and blanket the area it's a lot easier to do it with the sub six gigahertz band so again guys if you're buying a new smartphone right now with that 5g monkey just check what 5g brands actually they support and let's talk about what is a 5g in india this video is already becoming too big so i'll actually make another video very soon about the state of 5g in india and when can we expect 5g in india uh there are actually some variables but if in the best case scenario if everything 

falls into place we can expect 5g rollout not total rollout limited rollout i would say by end of 2021 but again there are a few things that need to fall in place because of that and in india uh definitely we are going to initially get the uh sub six gigahertz uh what do you say

 5g uh in india the millimeter might come on later on but as of now in india it will be sub 6 gigahertz band so again stay tuned to that video uh what do i feel about 5g in india when can we expect and what are the issues right now this is shubham and i hope to see you in my next article take care guys