What's the lowdown on 5G in the end of 2021?

Yosemite Winter

With all the promotion of latest generation of phones I wanted to know if it was anything substantial.

I was using Spectrum Mobile - MVNO on Verizon network with iPhone 7+. Then I started getting unexplained data leaks that Apple was not able to solve so I switched to Android. My first introduction was Google Pixel 3 which is an excellent phone with a short battery life. As Spectrum Mobile started supporting 5G I decided to check it out.

First I needed a phone that would support it - Qualcomm 888 Snapdragon is the latest chipset for 2021.

I do not like phones with notches or punches in the screen. I homed in on Sony Xperia 1 mark 3 as the phone that checked all the boxes.

After I started using it on Spectrum network I found out that it was not a "supported device". Basically everything worked except visual voice mail (not a big deal) and receiving SMS (big deal). Spectrum solution was for me to get another phone but I was already out of my $$$ so I decided to look for another solution with a different carrier.

First I needed to port out my phone number so I would not loose it.

Since I have been using Google Voice for years I decided to park my number there.

The process took couple days and $20.

Now I was free to check out any other carrier without going through the hassle of porting (and not having access to it while in limbo) my number.

After an extensive research I chose Mint.

They had an incredible promotion - buy 3 months and get 3 months free. I ended up spending around $50 for first 3 months of 4GB data per month and then got another 3 months on top of that. Not bad.

The bad part is that Mint runs on T-Mobiles network. Although I get a acceptable coverage at my home and office the coverage is spotty to say the least when I am on the road. I have ended up in a dead zone quite a few times which made me think about trying another network.

As I new about Verizon network from my Spectrum experience (coverage was good except the SMS issue) I decided to give AT&T a try.

AT&T PREPAID^SM Unlimited Plus for $50 a month ($75 without auto pay) plus tax ($55) had 5G access and would give me a good taste of the network.

After testing it out for a month I could not get 5G to work in my area although my area was covered on the maps. After 2 contacts with AT&T including a visit to a store for a SIM swap I was still not connecting to 5G. Lastly tech admitted that 5G was not "on" in my town and I gave up. The speeds were comparable to Verizon and so was the coverage.

I decided to give another go to T-Mobile on highest priority plan to see if I was missing anything from "deprioritized" Mint.

This time the choice was Los Mobile Magenta plan - $45 +tax = $50. Honestly, I ran SpeedTest many times and maybe I got slightly faster speed than Mint but it was not really noticeable. Upload speeds were still slow and not worth extra money.

At the end I am back on Mint until the plan runs out, then I am going back to Spectrum Mobile. As I got my SMS problem fixed I am just going to use Spectrum Mobile as a dumb pipe for Google Voice.