Verizon support says you should turn off 5G to save your phone’s battery

Despite its relentless promotion of 5G phones and the fact that it spent more than $ 45 billion bidding on a new, faster spectrum, Verizon support is now advising people on Twitter to turn off 5G access from their phones to preserve the battery.

On a Sunday morning tweet, Verizon support suggested that “one way to help conserve battery life is to turn on LTE” if users find that the batteries are “discharging faster than normal” This step, of course, would turn off 5G on a phone that has it available. It is also worth noting that you don’t really “turn on LTE” when doing this step – LTE is always enabled as a fallback for the 5G network. But Verizon is obviously being cautious not to tell its customers to “turn off 5G”.

Twitter users naturally pointed out that switching to LTE only would mean turning off 5G (which is available on some newer phones), but the helpful support person said it was important to take “steps to find the root cause of any speed issues, ”, Adding that Verizon is“ quickly rolling out more 5G areas and making constant updates to improve speeds. ”Verizon’s national 5G network uses a technology called DSS, which in many cases is actually slower than the LTE network that is trying to replace.

Verizon announced its big 5G plans for 2021 last month, after formally launching its next generation network in October 2020. One of its top priorities is to expand the coverage of its ultra-fast mmWave coverage, which is currently restricted to parts of some cities in the US. It also depends a lot on how close you are to a Verizon 5G website.

Both Verizon and AT&T spent a lot of money on FCC Auction 107, bidding on the C band spectrum. Verizon spent $ 45.4 billion – double the AT&T $ 23.4 billion. AT&T’s current national 5G network also relies on DSS with speeds close to or below 4G LTE.

The new frequencies will not be available until the end of 2021, at the very least, and will be available first in limited locations.