Do you really need 4g?

[InsaneNutter]

4g is been made a massive deal of by phone networks, its the latest hot word to try sell you a new phone / contract. However I've had a 4g phone for a few months now, in that time i've concluded i dont really need 4g, which is what i expected before 4g even started to be rolled out here in the UK.

3g is pretty fast, i can often get speeds up to 15mbps+ which is more than enough for any intensive data usage on the go. Sure 4g is insanely fast, i've seen people get 100mbps+ in some countries on it, i get around 25-35mbps wich is pretty good considering 4g signal is so weak in a lot of places around me at the moment.

However i actually have told my phone to default to 3g, i realised unless im tethering and downloading something i'm never going to need such high speeds for casual browsing on my phone and streaming video. I would sooner have full 3g signal everywhere rather than very weak 4g signal wich drains your battery quicker as the phone is using more power to try keep you connected.

I can certainly see uses for 4g in the future, however i personally dont think ill make much use of it for a long time yet. 3g is perfectly fine fine for me, even streaming 1080p video on Plex / YouTube!

What about you? do you think 4g is a must have or have you found you dont really make much use of it?

 

[Safinn]

Hey,

I upgraded my contract around 2 months ago going from 500MB 3G data to 1GB 4G data on my android nexus 5 and to be honest I don't see a benefit at all. To me it feels the same not making it worth it. Doing speed test show that I get around 20mb which is proves the little to no benefits I experience. With the Nexus 5's rubbish battery, with 4G I can't make it through half the day with no much use.

For me, not worth it right now.

 

[Dark Scyth]

I find it odd that this thread has been around for as long as it has without anyone leaving a reply until now.

I have used 4G as my phone has LTE but honestly, there is no reason for it. 3G can pull enough data to do basically anything you'd need to do streaming wise, the only case is that you'd get downloads faster. 4G is a battery waster on my phone and I can see an increase in battery life of hours if I set my phone to only use 3G and nothing more. That being said 5G is somewhat becoming a thing now, which can pull 1Tb speeds, I guess in case you want to download the whole internet.

 

[Trebor]

Got an iPhone 6 plus over Christmas and so it's the first phone I've had that can utilise 4g. To be honest I don't think it's essential for now but who knows what we might need for the future.