Verizon support says you need to turn off 5G to save your phone’s battery

Despite its relentless promotion of 5G phones and spending over $ 45 billion to bid on new, faster spectrum, Verizon support is now advising Twitter users to turn off 5G access from their phones to preserve battery life.

In one Sunday morning tweetVerizon support helpfully suggested that “one way to preserve battery life is to turn on LTE” if users find their batteries “draining faster than normal.” This step would of course disable 5G on a phone that has it. It’s also worth pointing out that you are not actually enabling LTE when you take this step – LTE is still enabled as a fallback for the 5G network. But Verizon is obviously careful not to tell its customers to “turn off 5G”.

Twitter users naturally pointed out that switching to LTE only would mean turning off 5G (which is available in some newer phones), but the helpful support person said it was important to resolve the “steps to find the cause.” first of any speed issue, ”Adding that Verizon“ is quickly launching more 5G zones and constantly updating to improve speeds. Verizon’s national 5G network uses a technology called DSS, which in many cases is actually slower than the LTE network it is trying to replace.

Verizon announced its major 5G plans for 2021 last month, after officially launching its next-generation network in October 2020. One of its top priorities is to expand the coverage of its ultra-fast mmWave coverage, which is currently limited to parts of certain cities in the US. It also depends heavily on your proximity to a Verizon 5G site.

Verizon and AT&T spent a lot of money on FCC auction 107, bidding on C-band spectrum. Verizon spent $ 45.4 billion, double the $ 23.4 billion of AT&T. AT&T’s current national 5G network also relies on DSS with speeds close to or lower than 4G LTE.

The new frequencies will not be available until the end of 2021 at the earliest and will first be available in limited locations.