If you are worried about the energy consumption of your smartphone and hesitate to buy 5G equipment, then the answer is here. Related research shows that the energy efficiency of 5G equipment is higher than that of 4G LTE. Of course, the specific energy consumption depends on the current data transmission speed and the application used.
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The study used the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G phone, which works on Verizon’s 5G and 4G networks. Both phones use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor and the X50 modem module. The two phones were tested at 5Mbps, 30Mbps, and maximum transmission rates while trying two different 5G radio conditions and multiple 4G conditions.
The final result is quite complicated, but basically the 5G equipment wins. In Verizon’s millimeter-wave 5G network, the transmission rate will reach a maximum of 1Gbps. At this time, ‘5G energy utilization is much higher than LTE.’ After 5G’s ‘appropriate speed reduction’, its efficiency is still higher. However, if the speed is reduced to a very slow rate, the energy utilization rate of 4G will win. But the main reason is that the basic energy consumption of 5G is higher during use.
In other words, the early 5G chips required less energy to transfer large amounts of data, but if you need to transfer a large number of small files (such as usual web browsing), it would be worse than 4G. Early 5G devices could use both 4G and 5G networks. So proper software optimization would allow it to make more reasonable choices when transferring files.
Of course, the energy consumption advantage of 5G is not too obvious, because the power of the smartphone is mainly used for screen illumination. But users can shorten the screen time when using 5G to download files, which also saves a part of the power.