lukec11's comments

Boost Mobile (under Dish Network), until a few months ago, ran their own custom-built 5G network that covered about 30% of the US population. They built it after the acquisition of Sprint by T-Mobile, in an effort to maintain a fourth nationwide wireless carrier.

Unfortunately Boost/Dish struggled significantly with finances and customer attraction post COVID, largely due to two problems (seamless roaming between their own network and partners’, and more importantly, getting manufacturers like Apple to build compatible phones). When the current president came into the picture, the FCC essentially forced the sale of Dish’s primary spectrum licenses to administration-friendly SpaceX, for future Starlink use.

As of now, they are in the process of moving their customers to AT&T (and possibly a secondary agreement with T-Mobile), but they seem to be maintaining their own network core - that’s likely why they’re able to implement support for this, while AT&T does not.

This is usually for a good reason - dual sim phones are almost always “DSDS”, or “Dual SIM Dual Standby”. The secondary SIM, because it doesn’t need to make a data connection, parks itself on the lowest-frequency (and therefore usually lowest-bandwidth) connection it can find. Meanwhile, your data-connected SIM is busy trying to stream a video or upload your photos, so it’s using a higher-frequency + higher bandwidth connection, resulting in a lower signal strength.

I looked through the AppHub APK last year after a friend told me they'd found unknown apps installed on their flagship Samsung, and I was very surprised to find some of the same "direct download" references you did.

I've known for a long time that T-Mobile shipped junk apps upon initial setup, but seeing them loaded OTA after a single click on an ad (even a few pixels off of the "x" button) is very concerning. Even putting aside the moral issues with practices like this, that's a huge security hole in a very large percentage of Android phones.

I saw the post title and immediately thought of you guys - really scary situation! Very happy to hear that Slack reached out with a solution.

CellMapper[0] is not real-time, but it collects data to make sector maps and estimates the position of the current eNB. Users who contribute enough data can "pin" these eNBs in the correct location.

Despite not being real-time, it's the best / most accurate app I've found of its kind and has a good community behind it.

[0] https://www.cellmapper.net/map

FWIW, the iPhone 12 I bought 2 weeks ago came with 14.2.1 (which has 2 jailbreaks available for it, unc0ver and Taurine)

Not sure if older iPhones would come with older versions too, I assume used ones would normally be up to date - though iPhone X and earlier are jailbreakable on all versions via checkm8

There's a common misconception that 5G specifically means you need to use millimeter wave (very high-band) networks. 5G can be on the same frequency as 4G, and it is more efficient than 4G - so with greater efficiency, it's easier to get usable output from that signal than with 4G. The signals will go "as far" regardless of 3G/4G/5G assuming they're broadcasted at the same frequency and power level, but the device being able to use it is a different story.

The reason 2G and 3G can sometimes reach further than LTE is for a similar reason - because it's easier to "hang onto" a 2/3G signal. The reason it's easier though is different - not because 3G is more efficient, but because it's less complex. This reddit thread[0] explains it better than I can, so I'll paste a comment from it here:

>>> The modulation scheme (how the digital "data" is packed into the "analog" wave to transmit it over the air) is simpler for [2G], which requires a lower wave quality to decode. It's the same reason you are more likely to get an [2G] signal farther away than LTE

Note that the reason 3G might be "faster" is probably due more to the congestion issue I talked about before - when the LTE network is oversubscribed, meaning too many people are connected to it and are slowing it down, sometimes dropping back to 3G (which very few people are connected to in 2021) can lead to you fighting less over your data.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/lwwkrl/when_was_th...

5G can be many things, but it isn't gigabit wireless speeds, or low latency, or smart microwaves. It can enable those technologies, but what it really is is a telecommunications standard, telling companies how to build out networks.

5G uses the same radio waves that 4G has, in many cases - T-Mobile US, for example, uses 600MHz and 2.5GHZ frequencies for 5G (and 4G). Sprint has been using 2.5GHz for 4G since 2008.

The biggest change that 5G could bring today honestly is capacity - if you've ever tried to use LTE in a busy train station, you can tell the impact that congestion has on that network's subscribers. Thousands of people connected to a few cells leads to significant slowdown. Generally, higher frequencies lead to shorter range and higher throughput, so in specific circumstances like Airports[0] with multiple antennas, 5G can allow for much higher throughput to many devices at once, alleviating congestion.

5G can also more efficiently make use of spectrum, which means 5G networks can reach further than 4G networks built on the same frequency.

There's a lot more to this, and I'd recommend reading into the Wikipedia page[1] on 5G for an in-depth look if you have time - but the basics are, 5G is a standard, not any one set of devices or antennas or expectations.

[0] https://news.tampaairport.com/tpa-welcomes-5g-and-enhanced-4... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G

Firefox does the same, as I discovered - I don't know whether it's a bug or intended functionality.

(As an aside, I keep HN at 150% and old reddit at 120% - those are the only 2 sites I have permanently zoomed)

T-Mobile US. The branding is used in other countries but is the companies themselves are separate.

Sites that use the prefers-color-scheme media query honor the OS setting on iOS, but it obviously doesn't work on sites that haven't implemented it - Dark reader[0] takes a invert-colors approach and makes it a little easier on the eyes.

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/darkreader/

I do the same with Reddit and HN - I have an account because I'm on the platform, but I rarely comment. This probably won't be a great move for Twitter, especially given how little time they've provided.