Are Your Phone's 5G Icon and Signal Bars Lying to You?

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: Look at the top right corner of your phone. You might see an icon with "5G" and another with vertical bars showing the strength of your internet connection. Those symbols don't mean what you think they do.

If your phone shows "5G," you're not necessarily connected to the latest and zippiest cellphone network technology. It might just mean that 5G connections are available nearby. And the bars are a cellular version of a shrug. There is no standard measure of how much signal strength each bar represents. "The connection icon is a lie," said Avi Greengart, president of the technology analysis firm Techsponential...

The good news is you might not need 5G, anyway. Most of the time, your phone calls, texting and web surfing are perfectly fine on the prior generation of wireless technology called 4G or sometimes "LTE." Many phone networks will funnel you over 5G service when it makes a real difference, like if you're on a video call or playing an intense video game.

If you see more specific types of 5G icons, like "5G UW" used by Verizon or "5G UC" if you're on T-Mobile service, Hyers said you're probably connected to a 5G network at that moment. Those extra letters or symbols sometimes indicate types of 5G technology that are capable of faster and more reliable connections, but they aren't always better, depending on your circumstances. Confusingly, AT&T has showed "5G E" icons on phones. That is not 5G service at all.
Here's how major carriers responded to the Post's reporter:

• "AT&T said its '5G' indicators on phones line up with a telecommunications standards organization that established the icon to mean 5G networks are available."

• "Verizon didn't respond to my questions."

• "T-Mobile said for most of its cellphone network, your phone accurately reflects if you're on 5G."

The article suggests setting your phone to just automatically switch to 5G networks when high-bandwidth applications are in use...

All uploads are LTE

[Yo,dog!]

At least in the U.S., all uploads still use LTE.

Re: All uploads are LTE

[BeepBoopBeep]

Most data should prefer LTE unless itâ(TM)s media content. LTE is by far superior with power usage. Ainâ(TM)t no body will notice emails/text of most data going through LTE.

Re:

[PPH]

Ain't no body will notice emails/text of most data going through LTE.

You underestimate the power of OCD in some users. What used to work just fine on 3G systems will now trigger panic attacks in some people when they realize they aren't using the latest tech.

Re:

[Yo,dog!]

You said it: unless it's media content.

Re:

[EvilSS]

Most of the US carriers are moving to 5G Standalone mode. It's a tower-by-tower upgrade so it will take them time to finish. That eliminates the LTE control plane.

AT&T has always loved lying to you

[ZorinLynx]

This is not the only way AT&T lies to you when you're using their service.

If you're in the US and roaming on an AT&T partner network, or if there's a natural disaster and disaster roaming is enabled and you're roaming on, for example, T-Mobile, it will still say "AT&T" even though you're not on their network.

This is specific to the US, too; if you go to say, Canada, it will say ROGERS or Bell or whatever. But if you're roaming within the US it will lie.

Also a few years ago your phone would say "4G" even though you were on a 3G network. AT&T justified it by saying their network performs like a 4G network. Seriously. It's like bad comedy.

Other providers don't seem to be as bad about this, but I'm sure they have their own issues too.

Re:AT&T has always loved lying to you

[PPH]

On the other hand, AT&T has been very honest when they display zero bars and a "No service available" message. Which happens more frequently every day.

Re:

[fahrbot-bot]

On the other hand, AT&T has been very honest when they display zero bars and a "No service available" message. Which happens more frequently every day.

To be fair, that credit belongs more to your phone than the network provider.

Re:

[fahrbot-bot]

This is not the only way AT&T lies to you when you're using their service. ... Also a few years ago your phone would say "4G" even though you were on a 3G network. AT&T justified it by saying their network performs like a 4G network. Seriously. It's like bad comedy.

Wait! What? You mean I can't trust that AT&T 5GE icon? What about that 9G [theverge.com] one?

Strength of âoeinternet connectionâ

[Austerity Empowers]

I stopped reading there. That has never been what those bars meant, and they mean it even less now.

Where I am, signal strength is rarely the issue anyway. All of the cell towers are so oversubscribed on their internet link that getting a packet through during peak hours is unlikely. But calls work fine, very few get dropped. Clearly the bottleneck is with the IP portion of the link. We definitely do need a metric for that too, since carriers wonâ(TM)t invest in themselves unless forced.

Re:

[Big Bipper]

You're right. Under provisioning of bandwidth on the backend is the real problem. Many providers will try to spoof you by assigning priority to ping or speed test packets so you think you actually have a fast link. Try ping -s 1024 google.com and compare it to ping google.com . If there's a big difference in response times, you're being spoofed by someone who's prioritizing the small ( 64 byte ) default sized ping packets. I think windows users need to use -l 1024 instead of -s 1024 to send a larger

Locked phones

[YuppieScum]

I'm wondering if this behaviour is only on phones sold by/locked to a specific provider? What would happen if I take a European-purchased unlocked Android phone to the USA and dropped a pay-as-you-go AT&T SIM into the second slot?

Re:

[PPH]

I can't get a straight answer to that question either. With GSM, it was easy (paying attention to the 2 vs 4 band phone differences). Now, nobody's talking. Given the differences mentioned in TFS, I'm wondering if you can even carry a 5G phone across different US providers.

Re:

[keltor]

There are in total 109 FR1 sub-6 Ghz bands, there are 7 FR2 bands (26 - 71 Ghz) and now there's a proposed FR3 bands which would cover the 7 - 25 Ghz.

No phone has all those bands and many of those bands are only for certain countries. iPhones for an example only have 5G mmWave in the US. (This corresponds to FR2.

There's also non terrestrial bands allocated for talking to Satellites.

Re:

[keltor]

That particular data is from the control plane of the tower you are talking to at that moment.

5G itself means very little

[Mspangler]

"5G is divided into three frequency bands (low, mid, and high). Each band has different capabilities: the low band (less than 1GHz) has greater coverage but lower speeds, the mid band (1GHz–6GHz) offers a balance of both, and the high band (24GHz–40GHz) offers higher speeds but a smaller coverage radius."

Frequency actually connected would tell you something, 5G doesn't really.

Re:

[cats-paw]

And the bars _should_ tell you something but it is completely dependent on the manufacturers implementation of what's called received signal strength.

These days that calculation should really be the same (due to the modulation and HW used - which has become extremely uniform), however there is some amount of averaging going on and that can potentially have a large effect on the value. Averaging _should_ be done, it's a question of how much.

Signal strength varies wildly based on the path. Local nulls are a t

Inaccurate summary

[paul_engr]

AT&T explicitly and deliberately lobbied the trade association to let them make up "5GE" or evolution, and it is explicitly, by definition not 5G at all, but rather old shot 4G by another name.

Betteridge gets it wrong here

[Tony Isaac]

The answer is, well yes, of course they're lying to you! Just like a cell service coverage map lies to you.

I always assumed

[Malay2bowman]

That the signal bars were just showing the raw strength of signal on whatever frequency the phone is using, and not necessarily the quality of the signal. There could be strong interference causing most of the packets to be dropped but the bars will still show as getting a strong signal.