Lots of new phones now have 5G support. The question is why are we left only with the choice of these large 5G modems as the norm? Is there a reasoning behind this?
I'm looking for something affordable that I can leave plugged in all the time without the battery bloating. Is there a way to turn off charging on any of those devices without draining them?
Imagine the speed after you've had 4!
I've had 5! :)
5x5G = 25G
You're breaking the rules:
1 shot
2 shot
3 shot
floor!
Bill still has to flick the switch though
Bought this one and works like a charm.
https://www.thegoodguys.com.au/telstra-5g-wi-fi-hotspot-1001…
$599, wow. Someone is making a lot of money on these.
What are you talking about? $599 is a week's fuel or week's veggies or week's electricity these days.
One week of interest.
This issue of what you call "battery bloating" has been raised before here. I presume you are talking about the scenario of where a lithium battery is left on charge, even when its already 100% charged, and that damages the battery and shortens its life. That was definitely a problem in the past with dumb devices and dumb chargers.
But now any 5G phone has smart charging built into the chipset. Smart charging senses when the battery is fully charged, and stops trying to keep charging it. I have two 5G phones that both have Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets in them. They tell me when they are being charged. And I can tell you definitively that when the battery hits 100% the charging stops, and the charger is just powering the phone.
Phones like the Oppo A54 5G can be purchased for far less that $599. They can be left on charge without it damaging the battery. They can be USB tethered to a router, and work just like a USB stick, with the router powering the phone through the USB cable, or connected to devices through wifi. And unlike a USB stick you can use them as a phone when you want to.
when the battery hits 100% the charging stops, and the charger is just powering the phone.
Doesn't the phone still run off the battery though, not the charger? In other words when the battery drops below 100% it's constantly being topped up. This is the problem.
The ideal charger for a lithium battery throws as many amps of current at the battery as that particular battery type can handle until it reaches about 80% capacity. This is called constant current (CC) mode. Then it switches to a mode where it supplies a constant voltage of about 4.1V. This is called constant voltage (CV) mode. With a fully charged lithium battery pushing back at that same 4.1V, that results in a steadily decreasing amount of current flowing from the charger into battery, until it reaches the point where the voltage from the battery reaches the same 4.1V, and the charger can't push any more current into the battery.
That's why they measure battery electric cars on how long it takes them to charge from 20% charged to 80% charged. Because topping up that last 20% happens a lot slower. You are better off driving off after a quick charge to 80% and having to stop 20% sooner for another quick 80% charge than waiting a long time for that last 20% to go into the battery, and getting the absolute maximum range a 100% charged battery is capable of.
In the smart charging in your phone the power is coming in at 5V from the charger. The smart charger controls the voltage from the charger to limit the charging current to what the battery can handle. And when the battery reaches 80% the smart charging circuitry reduces the voltage from the charger to 4.1V. If the phone is switched off, and the battery is at 100% it is pushing back with the same 4.1V, and the charger can only push a tiny amount of current into the battery. That tiny amount is not enough to do any harm to the battery. If the phone is switched on the charger is also supplying whatever additional current the phone needs. If you then switch off the charger, and it no longer supplies that current the phone needs, that amount of current immediately starts flowing out of the battery into the phone.
The problem occurs when the charging isn't smart and the charger tries to push more current into the battery than it is rated to handle, or it keeps trying to push more than 4.1V into the battery when it is above 80% capacity, or even above 100% capacity.
The USB+Wi-Fi USB modems are only 4G, but @ $96 outright, it's pretty affordable. you can also run 10 devices off the Wi-Fi. just connect it to a power brick (or USB port in a power point) and that's it.
I don't believe there's any low cost 5G standalone modems/routers on the horizon. 4G isn't 5G, but i was running this way for 5 weeks when I moved house, and i was consistently getting 80-110mbps
the battery bloating issue was a massive problem with devices like the Nighthawk M1. but the later models fixed that issue. alternatively, just connect it to power and remove the battery.
Does 5G coverage exist outside of the major cities?
Telstra is the only carrier that even provides good 5G coverage out to the edges of the capital cities and major population centres. The others just provide a little pool of 5G coverage around their towers in the outer suburbs and regional centres, so they can tick the box and say the tower delivers 5G, but not have to provide it to any more than the few subscribers within a couple of hundred metres of the tower. I suspect they don't want to have to pay for the high data rate connections to the towers that having any more than a few 5G subscribers on them would require.
Huawei was far and away the leader in 4G modem/routers. With it forced to abandon the development of new leading edge silicon chips by US anti-China sanctions denying it access to the advanced software needed, and with even Apple finding that developing a 5G modem design was beyond it and having to license Qualcomm designs, it seems there will not be cheap 5G USB modems to replace cheap 4G USB modems. At least for the present the cheapest 5G USB modem is a 5G mobile phone.
Sigh, I guess I'll have to make do with flashing openwrt to some tp-link modem and then tethering to a phone as I now have a method for cheap 5G…
I was hoping to use huawei because as long as it supports h-link there will usually be support even on older modems/routers.
I'm still not sure if the telstra 5g wifi pro (wifi egg) can run without the battery. I've had bad experiences with battery bloat from mining veruscoin and other cryptos on my phones (24/7). Almost all of them bloated.
I got my GL.iNet Slate (AR-750S-Ext) because I was assured it could USB tether a phone. And it does. It runs OpenWrt out of the box. It has a USB2 port that you can plug any h-link Huawei modem into, or a phone. You just tell it whether its a modem or a phone.
It was subsequently suggested to me that the TP-Link TL-MR3020 that I already had might have worked with a phone, just like it worked with a Huawei USB modem. The two are close in terms of the communications protocols used, but not identical. But the Slate wasn't expensive, and it definitely would work.
I know the Slate Plus (GL-A1300) was coming. GL-iNet's web site suggests it has arrived, but I can't see anyone offering it for sale. It has a faster processor, a faster (USB3) port, and faster wifi than the Slate.
How long did bloat take to happen? My OnePlus 5G phone has been on near permanent charge for 18 months, and my Oppo 5G phone for the last 6 months, with no sign of any issues.
It's in your blood veins if you're double vaxxed.