Switch to LTE suggested by Verizon for battery life savings
Verizon Wireless Customer Service sent out a tweet on the morning of February 28, 2021 that seems to suggest that 5G is causing issues with battery life.
The Twitter post suggests that users that found their battery life was draining faster than normal could conserve battery life by turning on LTE.
LTE is always enabled on phones on their network as a fallback for the 5G network, should Verizon’s 5G network be inaccessible.
While Verizon was cautious so as to not actually tell its customers to turn off 5G, that is all that would be changed if customers followed the instructions in the tweet.
Previous to this tweet, Verizon has been relentlessly promoting their 5G phones, and spent $45.4 billion in the FCC’s auction of the C-band spectrum.
Verizon’s nationwide 5G network uses a technology called DDS, which in most instances is slower than the LTE network that it’s trying to replace.
Late last year in October 2020, they formally launched their next-gen network.
Currently, one of their top priorities is expanding coverage of its ultra-fast mmWave.
mmWave requires users to be close to a Verizon 5G site in order to take advantage of the speed.
The new frequencies acquired in the auction will not become available until the end of 2021 at the earliest.
Hopefully, Verizon will have access to phones with better battery life by then and will no longer need to advise customers to switch their phones over to LTE to conserve battery life.
As always, if we can be of help with your network or computer, give us a call here at RHYNO Networks. (855) 749-6648
