Does this imply that in the near future 5G will have better coverage and will be cheaper than 4G?
In that case it feels like maybe it will just replace 4G.
This critic could be made about almost all of the technological advances made possible by the capitalism system. Long live "marketing bs" that allows incremental improvements like this one
Regards
Exactly, it is an incremental improvement that is marketed as a revolutionary one. When 4G and 3G came out they were simple stating that it is much faster, but now with 5G everywhere you see how it will revolutionize the world and make new things possible that were never possible before, like remote surgery, articles like this one: https://www.digi.com/blog/post/5g-and-the-future-of-telemedi...
If you want lowest latency, use a wired connection which has existed for many years. Why would you use a more unreliable like 5G that might lose connection when someone waves his hand instead of a faster, more reliable wired one? There are tons of other examples like this.
For the average user in most cases the download connection speed is actually limited at the server end, not at his end so even if he has 10GB/s download speed, it won't be able to use it. Not only that, but also data caps, storage write speed, infrastructure and other current limitations make the promoted benefits of 5G simply non-existing for at least several years.
If you want a future-proof phone, yes you can get a 5G one, only that it's not future proof. Other components of the device must be drastically improved too before they can take advantage of 5G, which means that you would still have to change your device before you can actually use the promised benefits.
I love technological advancements, but I hate it when the public is tricked into thinking something will greatly and instantly improve their life when it reality it won't change anything.
The 4G speeds nowdays are fast enough that they are usually not the limiting factor in day-to-day usage of mobile internet. The advantages of 5G are not that big for the average mobile user, there are more drawbacks than advantages for using 5G, at least in the upcoming 5-10 years.
I said that it's capitalism marketing bs, because that's what it is: hyping the technology to more than it is for the sole purpose of increasing profits for telecom and hardware manufacturers.