4G or 5G

[Bill Gates Jr.]

My adult daughter who is as much an expert on anything technical as I am in brain surgery, complains about her old phone and wants a $1400+ 5G 512 GB Samsung phone. She does not stream movies. All she will be doing is downloading audiobooks and using normal phone functions. The question I am asking is 1) Does she really need a 5G phone and all that memory just to download audiobooks? She has an older Kindle but wants to be able to hear audiobooks off of her phone when not at home as her Kindle, like my iPad is old and homebound. She also says her memory on her very old phone is very minimal and basically maxed out. She has no audiobook on her phone just apps and photos. I did suggest she transfer her photos to her computer, but she does not know how...I can probably do that for her, but bottom line she needs a new phone. I believe a 4G would be much cheaper and maybe 128GB or 256GB should be more than enough. Not sure if it is possible to copy audiobooks from her kindle to her android phone. Maybe a new Kindle and a much, much cheaper phone?

 

[IWT]

As the matters you raise are personal and as you are posting on behalf of another, I shall take a cautious and equally personal approach to my response.

I see no point in shelving out good money on a 5G phone (iPhone or other) if the requirements are as you stated.

5G is reputed to be faster than WiFi in those areas where WiFi is limited for whatever reason. I understand that 5G may be more advanced in its availability in parts of the USA compared with the UK where it is sparse.

As I understand it, the real advantage is for people on the move around the city who need fast access to data. It would seem that your daughter could easily manage her requirements at home or in other high WiFi places such as cafes etc.

Audiobooks, photos and the like are the bread and butter of phone use that can easily be met with current technology.

NB Very personal view.

Ian

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Memory != Storage. If you are needing to store a lot of data on your phones, videos, pictures, and other things, and needing to have access to them at ALL times, then you'll need a device with ample storage space, thus the 512GB request.

I know next to nothing about Android phones, so you'll have to translate the following to how it works there, but on iPhones if I kept all of my files in my iCloud Drive (which I do), the phone automatically removes the files that I'm not using to save space. If there's a book or audiobook I want to read/listen to, I download it to the phone and read/listen. A few days later it automatically is off my phone but still in my iCloud Drive if I need it.

There are multiple things at play here, 5G is the newest protocol for cellular communication and in another year or so, every phone will be 5G compliant.

Whether you "need" or not, is a decision you'll have to make.

 

[MacInWin]

I think 512GB of storage is a bit of overkill. I have an iPhone that I bought and thought I needed that much storage. I have 10,597 photos and 390 videos I have made on it, plus a couple of hundred albums of music that make up 2,729 songs, two large navigation systems that have maps of the entire US on the iPhone and hundreds of ebooks in the Kindle application and Nook application. I also have 272 applications installed (I almost never uninstall one, which is a really bad habit). With all of that, I've used less than half of the 512GB of storage. I'm at 169.9 GB used, and it's showing 342 GB available. The biggest single category of storage is the Photos/Videos, which is 84GB for the 11,000 items. You can use these numbers as sort of a guideline for what your daughter might need, but as I said, I think 512 is overkill. Unfortunately, without know the model phone and options, if she needs more than the smaller end, you may have to go up to 512 if that's all the maker offers. Just be aware that if her usage is like mine, 256 might well do, if they offer it.

 

[Bill Gates Jr.]

All the responses are basically what I tended to believed. As a general question regarding iPhones...which should also translate to Android phones, how large a storage space is used up for your average audio book..I understand some books are larger, some smaller but on average, about how much space is used up per book? I ask this as an older person who has never downloaded or used audiobooks and who stills buys and reads Hard cover history books. Currently reading "City of Fortune...How Venice ruled the seas. Waiting in the wings, "The Anarchy" about the East India Company and "The Napoleonic Wars", once I get my cataract surgery.

Pete

 

[MacInWin]

Depends on the book length, obviously, but a typical paperback sized book is about 2 to 2.5 MB of data, including the cover image. So every GB of storage is about 400 books, or so. I don't have any audiobooks so I can't say how long they may be.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Each audiobook is going to be around 50-100MB in size depending on the length. So 1GB of should hold about 10 or so audiobooks. But the question isn't really about carrying your entire library around, but rather having access to a small portion of it for a duration and then moving onto something else.

Unlike photos that you might keep around for a longer time, I can't imagine a reason you'd keep listened-to audiobooks around after the fact.

Ultimately, this is more a matter of the getting the latest fanciest and shiniest thing and less about what it will be used for.

 

[IWT]

@Bill Gates Jr. ,

Hi Pete. Just for info, I have around 20 Audiobooks, about 40 standard books, some music and a few photos and loads of apps on my iPad and the TOTAL comes to under 25GB - which includes the iOS.

Of course, you can offload the books to iCloud if you desire and simply re-download them as and when you need them.

Ian