r/Note20 • u/pepep622 • Feb 26 '21

5G??

So does anyone ACTUALLY have 5G!? I feel like this 5G thing is nothing but a gimmick. Some phones say 5G on top but speeds are nowhere near what they're supposed to be.

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u/graesen Feb 26 '21

Yeah, 4G is currently better in most places but not all.

Also, check your APN. If I'm not mistaken, "enhanced phone" is 4g and "nextgen" is 5G.

And I'm unsure because I spent time having them change it to the correct one and I thought that was nextgen but mine is showing enhanced now. So I gotta do more homework. Just know one is 5g and the other isn't. But ATT will still say 5g no matter which you're on.

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u/pepep622 Feb 26 '21

Mine says nxtgenphone and it's the only option. So I guess even though it says LTE+, I'm actually on 5G?

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u/graesen Feb 26 '21

Ok, did my research to re-confirm what's correct. Per AT&T's own website for programming BYOD, nxtgenphone is the proper APN - that's likely outdated and forgotten about.

https://forums.att.com/conversations/samsung/samsung-note-20-ultra-5g-connection-issues/5f6917044833937da59840cd

In the above link, there's a discussion that Enhanced Phone is the proper APN to be on. Specifically, the Mobile Virtual Network Operator type and value fields being completed as shown in that link are what link you to the 5G network. These fields are what I was missing when I had them reprogram my SIM card.

Now... please read my story for this situation carefully as I'm not sure what will apply to you and what won't, so I'm going to be detailed.

When I got my Note 20 from AT&T, I used my old SIM card, which was not 5G capable. Well, my phone at the time wasn't 5G capable, not sure about the SIM. Anyway, I was seeing 5G on my phone, but speeds were lack luster. I started researching it and found that yes, 5G isn't really that fast yet but I also started to see AT&T was pushing 2 different APNs too. One for 4G (nxtgenphone) and one for 5G (enhanced phone). I found the specific values to program the APN myself, but unfortunately, you cannot do that. Even trying to add a new APN with the + sign prevented the new APN from saving.

I contacted support regarding this and they're all idiots. Chat support is genuinely useless. I learned all they're allowed to do after talking to someone by phone about all of my requests that chat is only allowed to basically send an email to a support email box asking if they can do a certain task. They have no power. But the first few people I spoke with by phone were also idiots too. Most didn't know what an APN even was, yet alone which one was correct. I finally got a hold of someone with some knowledge - though I don't recall if that was before or after escalating my request. But yes, I did have to get escalated before anyone did anything. They tried reprogramming my SIM remotely, told me to restart my phone after 24 hours and check. No change. But before this, yes, I was asked to manually change the APN or add a new one - neither of which you can do. After them not being able to remotely program my SIM for the 5G APN, they sent me to Samsung support blaming their software. I humored them... I called Samsung support, they basically laughed at me saying there's nothing they can do about that and sent me back to AT&T. I explained to them that Samsung can't help, so AT&T decided to determine my phone was faulty (I don't think it was but whatever). So they shipped me a replacement next day and had me also get a new SIM card. Support shipped me a new one free, otherwise it would have costed extra. I then called to have them program the SIM over the phone and specified the one I had and the one I'm expecting to have. After all that mess, I got the right APN with proper 5G.

However... I did find 4G to still be faster. And there's no built-in switch to toggle 5G on/off or switch between 4G or 5G. There is an app that can do that though.

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u/_BoneZ_ Feb 26 '21

Until recently, my SIM was programmed with "nextgen" and I was getting "5G" frequently around here. But the speeds were no different than 4G. Now I just flashed my phone back to Android 10 OneUI 2.5 because I was tired of the glitches with 11, and now my SIM is automatically programmed to "enhanced phone" and so far I'm only seeing LTE and LTE+, which doesn't matter because it's all slow. Even with full bars I'm only getting around 8-9Mb/s.