Do We Need to Buy 5G Phones? Surprise!

what i'm going to talk about today affects not only the regular consumer whose phone offerings in fall 2021 will likely be made up of mostly 5g phones but also many of the people who follow me and are interested in privacy phones there is a delay of about a year before current model phones can be turned into privacy phones using a process we call the googling and that is important to my followers since most older phones are lte not 5g so there's a concern that everyone would be required to purchase 5g phones this is even more important for privacy-minded people because i've said in a prior video from a couple of years ago that 5g introduces some major privacy dangers but the issue is a more general one even for the average consumer anyone looking to buy a used phone is concerned about the longevity of a phone they buy and many were shocked to find that even newer phone models from a couple of years ago are no longer supported in 2021 since most of the older phones are lte and pretty much 3g support is being eliminated many wonder if their phone will still work in the usa activating new phones on 3g is no longer allowed by any carrier anyway there is a lot of consumer concern about phone technology in 2021 with the introduction of 5g and this is likely one of the worst years for phone selections since some changes occurred without warning and rendered some phones obsolete in this video i'll help you make an intelligent choice about phone models for 2022 and beyond stay right there [Music] when you need better search results like those from google but don't want the google tracking check out privacy search engine startpage.com it does not collect or share any of your personal data so you can search anonymously i have a vpn service bytes vpn my company also sells d google phones and vpn routers these products are made to make your identity disappear on the internet if you're interested in them they're on my app bracks me the link is in the description this of course is a privacy channel so my subject matter deals with informing you of dangers to privacy which are introduced by technology that is able to harm you however what i will talk to you about today is of benefit to just about anyone looking for a used phone the used phone market is huge and of course it's a great way for phone buyers to save money for the privacy conscious we have no choice but to use used phones the os that i load on these safe phones is lineage os which is installed with no google apps or referred to as no gaps this is what i call a d google phone and it is really running android open source project or aosp with no gaps this is currently the safest and most functional way to have a safe phone and one that is free from tracking as well as censorship some have even marketed this as a freedom phone well i've been selling this freedom phone for a while now then anyway the problem is that up to 2020 all the newer phones available have been lte based the sale of 3g phones mostly ended in 2012 so that will be 10 years ago now since lte has been a common phone technology now in late 2020 some phones have been sold with 5g for example google sold a pixel 4a and then a pixel for a 5g which is actually a larger phone the iphone 12 was the first 5g phone from apple here we are in fall 2021 when this video was made and we have not yet seen the new models but guaranteed they will all be using 5g technology so the question is is lte dead are we going to be wasting money on old technology if we buy lte phones are we going to have to switch phones and even dump older d google phones that are not 5g well this is actually a pretty complicated topic but first let's talk about what 5g is since that is very relevant i will not address anything to do with health dangers of rf since that has nothing to do with this topic and any discussion of health dangers cannot be done just specifically on 5g at the moment so you will find out momentarily why that is but i will address the dangers of 5g to our privacy true 5g uses two distinct technologies the first is called mm wave or millimeter wave this involves moving the cell phone traffic from the current range of around 800 megahertz to 1900 megahertz all the way to 20 to 300 gigahertz this is called the microwave band in fact the microwave band starts at 1 gigahertz your microwave oven operates at 2.4 gigahertz your wi-fi operates at 2.4 gigahertz and 5 gigahertz so the plan is to push cell traffic higher to 20 to 300 gigahertz now what is the reason for this the issue is that there's a lot of traffic now in the cell bands which are fairly narrow both 3g and lte traffic are squeezed in between 800 to 1900 megahertz and that has to be distributed among several carriers so the entire range of available bandwidth for all phones is squeezed into just a little over 1 gigahertz for all carriers now imagine being able to use bands from 20 to 300 gigahertz cares will then have a massive room to deliver a huge amount of traffic in a band range that has little to no traffic at the moment but unfortunately it is not so simple as just switching the mobile network bands when you start using higher frequencies the range becomes shorter and higher frequencies cannot go through solid objects we already know this from our use of wi-fi 2.4 gigahertz wi-fi has a longer range than five gigahertz wi-fi five gigahertz wi-fi has faster speed because there's more bandwidth but it can't handle walls well in order to keep the same range of signal reception from the current lte bands to millimeter wave the signal strength will have to be drastically increased this is not just a problem for the phone carrier that has to have more high power transmitters but the phones themselves would have had to increase power to transmit as well more power would have introduced more rf danger since we put these phones next to our head but someone came up with a solution which is called beam forming and that is the second part of the 5g technology beamforming is essential because without this basically millimeter wave transmission will not be possible just as a short explanation scientists were able to create a focused beam of rf instead of an omni-directional signal without requiring moving directional antennas those of you with knowledge of radios like those with hem licenses will understand that directional signals reach further the same energy used to create the rf signal will have a much more significant range increase if it is directional versus rf that is omnidirectional omni meets in all directions the problem was how to do directional transmission in cell networks without thousands of moving antennas and not using a mechanical solution the solution came in the form of a technology called mimo or multiple input multiple output antennas basically this tech uses many antennas by transmitting the same signal using several antennas and then using software tricks like for example phase shifting of the rf signal among the several antennas it became possible to change the direction of the signal and just by software to make this possible for multiple cell users hundreds of antennas would have to be placed in a cell tower and pointed in all directions this implementation of many hundreds of antennas is called massive mimo this my friends is where the danger lies to our privacy massive mimo in 5g enables a signal to pinpoint a specific phone directionally in order for the weaker millimeter wave signal to reach your phone the signal has to be a very focused beam and pointed to a single phone in fact this technology does not really support the phone being in motion since the beam has to be directly aimed at you you can imagine the privacy dangers here at any point in time someone at the carrier or government can pinpoint the exact location of any person with a 5g phone and we're talking inches here not only is a real-time tracking this could evolve into the most massive data collection ever done since an exact location at every moment can be tracked historically for any person with a 5g phone and you wouldn't be able to turn it off this is the potential of the technology so those of you who are watching this and willing to add even more surveillance to your lives will love the fact that this technology will supposedly allow you to watch videos with ease on your phone in exchange for someone knowing your every move yay great stuff more channels to limit the information you see to what big tech wants you to see now let me introduce another factor here that is interesting millimeter wave transmissions are not able to function by itself someone asked me this question before and it took some research to figure out if beam forming is necessary to do 5g then how does the beam initially find you so it can focus on you how does your phone know where to direct its beam and are the phones also going to have massive bimo how many antennas will have to be on the phone to gain a directional signal as it turns out a phone really can't operate just with beam forming for one if you're in a moving car beam forming isn't going to work well since the beam isn't going to reliably predict where you are going to be and due to the range problem of millimeter wave it really will not be possible to use it in rural areas so the concept of millimeter wave cell networks is really designed for heavy traffic metropolitan areas to put it in simple terms 5g is a dead end for those not in cities and for those in cities millimeter wave does not work when signals are blocked by buildings are indoors or are in motion so here's a surprise in order for millimeter wave technology to actually work properly each phone needs to support an older technology at the same time and what is this older technology well surprise surprise it's lte so think of it this way to implement true 5g a phone will have to have two transmitters one operating at lte and one at millimeter wave this would then cover the moment when the millimeter wave technology is not functional so this should answer one question on this technology at least is lte dead clearly the answer is no it seems apparent that even current lte will be supported for a very long time i've seen projections of lte availability at least till 2030. your current phones will be long dead before 20 30. i'm sure so it looks like our current phones will not have an issue although we have been tricked before so i'll get into why some lte phones are no longer supported even though they're fairly new but first let me state that i will resist going into 5g technology since the issue of direct monitoring of the location of every single phone at all times is extremely bothersome to me if you support what i say does this mean you will not use a pixel 5 pixel 4 a5g or any fall 2021 model which will all likely be 5g well here's the revelation folks the revelation is that we are not on 5g yep we have fallen for the marketing gimmick 5g is here yes fake 5g is here and 18 t and t mobile were the first to make this statement so people think they will have better signals because of this the truth folks is that the marketing teams of those companies want out the technology touted as 5g with millimeter wave and massive mimo is currently not here today they will likely call that 6g what they are calling 5g is really nothing more than lte advance or what are some are calling lte plus why is it not 5g first it doesn't operate in the millimeter rf range in the expected 20-300 gigahertz lt advanced operates in the range known as sub 6 gigahertz in other words it operates in the areas already well known to us like the range from near 1 gigahertz to 5 gigahertz and that is heavily used by modern technology products like wi-fi bluetooth lte laura and so on secondly lte advanced does not yet use massive mimo to do the beam forming so it is not able to pinpoint an exact location at all times but lte advanced does make use of mimo antennas which is also used by most modern wi-fi routers with 802.11 ac or 802.11 ax those also have mimo now mimo as implemented here has to do more with how high speeds are retained on lte advance and less to do with beamforming higher speeds are attained on wi-fi 802.11 ac and newer standards as well as lte advance by the use of a technology called carrier aggregation in other words instead of having a single channel used for transmit and receive the signal is spread out over multiple channels both on send and receive like this thus more data can be received in theory lte advanced using carrier aggregation can allow a bandwidth of up to one gigabit per second currently most lte is limited to 20 megabits per second or slower in real life so what is touted as 5g today is nothing more than multiple lte signals packed together thus a phone sold as 5g is just able to send and receive signals using carrier aggregation of lte thus at the moment there is no true 5g phone and all the dangers i stated are not yet here it may be that lte advance has more directionality so triangulation by cell tower may be more accurate it is possible since a mimo antenna can be somewhat directional even without the hundreds of antennas per transmitter however i don't think we can be accurately tracked by this method at the moment so the current flock of so-called 5g phones are transmitting in the sub 6 gigahertz range for example some carriers license the additional bandwidth at 3.5 gigahertz and some license the 2.5 gigahertz range now i said earlier that 5g health concerns cannot be specifically addressed because the truth is there is currently no difference between 5g and lte or even 3g there's a study on 3g and health which i discussed in another 5g video that i made a couple of years ago so that's still valid as far as i'm concerned as i said before the frequencies used by the carriers may be different in fact this is not really that different from lte each carrier had a reserve ban between 800 to 1900 megahertz though now they will have added frequencies like 2.5 gigahertz and 3.5 gigahertz thus making more use of this sub 6 gigahertz band the significance of this to phones is that for your phone to work with a specific carrier the phone has to support the frequencies mentioned and often to support multiple frequencies the phone has to have different antennas i haven't opened up a 5g enabled phone but i will guess that it will have more antennas if you're in a rural area i can't imagine how you will benefit from lte advanced phones even transmission at 2.5 or 3.5 gigahertz will have a much shorter range than the lte range of 1 to 2 gigahertz the higher the frequency the less the range and some carriers will charge you more for using 5g and i already said that even true 5g will not be beneficial in the rural areas the future may lie in wi-fi calling you satellites like starlink or even simpler technology like carriers investing in more fiber optic lines to reach rural areas if lte is going to be around for a long time to come then why is it that certain phone models are no longer supported by carriers and why didn't we get sufficient warning or even been given understanding what the issue was in advance so we could have purchased the correct phone now i don't have the entire story here some phones i sold were no longer supported for reasons unknown but mostly the reasons were clear those phones not supporting voice over lte v-o-l-t-e can no longer be activated you can however still run your phones that have been previously activated however you cannot activate a new phone without voice over lte so i tried to understand why this is and the unexpected answer is that carriers split the signal so that the data channel for your internet always used lte however networks supported voice traffic that was writing over 3g frequencies thus even lte phones were using 3g for the voice part to distinguish between phones that use 3g for voice versus those that use lte for voice the term voice over lte makes that specific the reason carriers became aggressive with eliminating any use of 3g for other purposes was that the carriers wanted to free up the frequencies used by 3g and repurpose that for lte advanced and as i told you earlier they're not yet going to switch traffic to millimeter wave so cares are stuck with using existing license frequencies so in theory those carriers with more frequencies can have more bandwidth this by the way is mostly why t-mobile purchased sprint true sprint cdma phones will no longer be supported in 2022 and probably there aren't too many of those phones left anyway and that frees up the sprint bands for use by t-mobile interesting how these games are played and at t and verizon are trying to catch up by eliminating 3g as soon as possible so they can use that bandwidth as well if you're not in the us i'm sure similar games will be played so just look at the players involved in your country and then you can get a sense of the competition with these frequencies most world phones support many frequencies so they tend to bunch up in the same bands worldwide which was in the 800 megahertz to 1900 megahertz range and possibly now using the extra bands in the sub gigahertz range like i mentioned earlier my prediction then is that true 5g with millimeter wave and massive mimo antennas is still many years away with all the positioning being done in the sub six gigahertz range these carriers will not want to waste their investment so this will likely be usable for a long time when you purchase a used phone the model of the phone must not be 3g the phone must not only be lte but have voice over lte and some newer phones actually operated in 3g so examples of problematic phones are the original pixel 1 and pixel xl first generation these are lte but have no voice over lte so carriers like at t have stopped supporting new activations models like moto g7 play although being a recent phone had 3g models there are newer models g7 plays and they did not change the naming convention so that could be problematic because you don't know which was which the motorola g7 xt 1962-1 and the motorola g7 xt 1962-6 were very popular phones and for some reason verizon stopped supporting it and i have no idea why they're still supported by at t and t-mobile a g7 is not only lte but also has voice over lte so i don't understand the verizon limitation verizon is the only phone carrier in the us with really strict model blocking and for this reason it is my least recommended carrier for using de-google phones since they are so unpredictable the phones that i believe have the longest possibility of support are the pixels starting with the pixel 3. that has lte and voiceover lte at this point in the lifespan of the phone batteries may need to be replaced but so far they have support with android 11 or lineage os 18.1 and likely android 12 as well like i said it is not necessary to get a 5g specific model so it is not necessary to get a pixel 4a 5g particularly in a rural area where carrier aggregation is not likely to be used i definitely do not recommend any iphones for privacy reasons they cannot disconnect from sending data to apple hq like you can do with the google fonts however for those wondering about lte support iphone 6 and up supported voice over lte so they can still be used anything older from apple is now ready for retirement just a general heads-up on phones that can be de-googled only those phones supported by linux os can be de-googled and obviously no iphones samsung phones made for the usa market cannot be de-googled all pixels sold by carriers cannot be de-googled only phones coming from google store can be de-googled some oneplus phones like the ones with a t designation like 70 80 are locked by the carrier i'll give you a general tip do not buy phones sold by carriers they will often lock the phone up both from switching carriers and from oem unlocking which keeps it from being reflashed with a different rom or even a newer rom like from android 11 to android 12. so they may seem like bargains but they lock you in and those phones have lesser value in resale those that can be de-googled fetch a higher price because of course companies like mine will buy them this locking scheme seems more prevalent in the us by the way it seems to be less of an issue internationally if you're looking for flip phones the problem is that the old ones are on 2g or 3gs so you will no longer be able to activate them in the us newer flip type phones that support lte are not typically marketed in the us but most of these are running kai os kaios is ultra popular in countries like india just to caution you kai os is partially owned by google there is a clear partnership of integration of google within kaios so this makes it potentially unsafe in my opinion sure there's less data to take in kaios since it has limited app capability but still it's tied to google and thus this can be cross tied to your other activities on a computer there are other chinese phone models like huawei that supposedly are de-googled let me caution you these phones are locked so we cannot look at what's in the phone so if there's spyware in there we will not know and as i already mentioned if it's locked you cannot update to os to the next version like from android 11 to android 12. again to remind you i do sell the google phones mostly google pixel models and a few other brands and they're better than the so-called freedom phone particularly compared to the pixel models which are higher quality i also provide a service to de-google certain models and you can check that out on brax may they're on my store and brax me all the models that i sell are lte or 5g and all support voice over lte if you find yourself enjoying my videos i hope you support the cause by hitting the subscribe button and the notification bell this will help more people learn about this message about privacy thank you for watching and see you next time [Music]

Channel: Rob Braxman Tech

Views: 54,005

Rating: 4.9764199 out of 5

Keywords: internet privacy, internet privacy guy, tech privacy, privacy, 5g network, 5g phones, is lte dead?, do we need 5g phones, 5g privacy dangers, 5g RF safety, RF safety, rf dangers, sub 6ghz, lte advanced, lte plus, degoogled phones, android open source project no gapps, aosp no gapps, lineageos, calyx os, graphene os, google pixel 4a 5g, google pixel 5, google pixel 5a, google pixel 6, iphone 12, iphone 13, iphone 13 5g

Id: JJIJruMgfUI

Length: 26min 30sec (1590 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 09 2021