4G is going out, and here’s 5G, what has been touted as the network that will take us through the next technological Internet of Things(IoT) revolution. 5G will have various applications with core improvement vectors being lower latency, faster speeds, and allows a higher number of connected devices.
Google is also ready to make the big leap to 5G with its upcoming Android iteration; Android 11 R. In Android 11’s features overview page, Google has detailed how various 5G technologies will be labeled.
One odd label is 5Ge, which isn’t a real 5G network but an LTE standard. Google is going forward and will show LTE Advanced Pro, or LTE-A Pro as 5Ge in Android 11 devices.
LTE-A Pro is an upgrade to LTE Advanced promising speeds of up to 3 Gigabit per second speeds using carrier aggregation. But whatever that speed, this isnt 5G.
However, the rest of the 5G labels are the ones that will indicate actual 5G bands.
Here’s how Android 11 will indicate various network labels;
- LTE — plain 4G
- LTE+ — 4G with carrier aggregation
- 5Ge — LTE Advanced Pro
- 5G — NR, sub-6GHz
- 5G+ — NR on millimeter-wave cellular bands
5G NR is the standard being used to build 5G coverage. This Qualcomm article covers everything you need to know about 5G networks.
