Usually requires a new phone, I think the poster meant planned obsolescence.

It's not like 4G will shut down any time soon nor that we're at a stage where we have any use case for 5G speeds on a phone.

I don't see how 5G fits into a planned obsolescence argument.

Just wait a few years!

In a few years the majority of us will swap our phones anyway, 5G or no 5G.

Don't get me wrong, if the comment above said planned obsolescence instead of 5G, I'd be fully aboard. But 5G on its own makes no difference on climate change that I'm aware of.

5G is a new park of machines for the network operators. It's also a new park of machines for the consumers.

It's huge because we are so numerous.

Imagine you renew a boat fleet. Imagine the impact on the nearby forest. Going from no boats to having a fleet may be worth the damage. Going from a very good fleet to a slightly more advanced fleet may not be worth it.

Network infra and smartphones are the same. They require us to mine all their components and use energy to transform them.

4G seems to provide enough value to me. I don't like the tradeoff we get of "i can download 4K in the elevator now" (seems unnecessary to me) vs "we unleashed megatones of CO2, mined out large cobalt mines that will never form again in milleniaz to come, etc (seems critical to me)

In this context, perhaps higher power consumption (owen side) relative to 4G?

Power consumption of 5G is about 20x lower than 3G and getting lower as we speak (there are many 5G technologies only gradually getting adopted). So probably he meant the planned obsolescence mentioned already above.

Any time we increase efficiency, we also increase consumption. 5G increases efficiency, it's true. Now people consume more. It's enables new usages which people will jump on.

This happens in History every time we improve efficiency. Cars now consume a fraction of what early cars did, yet we use these efficiency gains to stuff them with gadgets, and make them bigger, and overall they still consume more than they used now in absolute terms.

In other words the engine inside your modern car is more fuel efficient than the first Ford, but we now make SUV that consume way more to produce and operate, can't be repaired/services easily, and people own multiple of them per household.

This "rebound effect" can be seen everywhere

Whatever flaws it has are completely unrelated to climate.

OP might just be venting.