What do you look for in "bands" available on your phone?

[Andy Burnelli]

In a recent thread both The Real Bev and I intoned that we hear all the time
about "bands" that any given phone supports, but in real life, these
supported bands don't seem to directly affect what we do with the phone.
<https://groups.google.com/g/misc.phone.mobile.iphone/c/I5LRjVAdwHI/m/xHnZDLDnAgAJ>
<https://groups.google.com/g/misc.phone.mobile.iphone/c/I5LRjVAdwHI/m/72JC9P30AgAJ>

Do they?
I don't know.

I haven't thought all that much about what bands to select or what bands to
unselect prior to The Real Bev bringing up the point about available bands.

What I know is that there are free apps which will allow you to _set_ the
bands (if you don't want to use certain bands, that is) on your phone.
<https://i.postimg.cc/FFByv7Ps/bands01.jpg>

Given you may have that kind of band-control on your phones, I ask...
*What do you look for in bands that are supported in your phone & why?*
<https://i.postimg.cc/ZKnwPGQ0/bands02.jpg>

As an example of the lowest end tier I would think, I picked up a handful of
free Samsung A32-5G phones and a half-priced iPhone 12 mini earlier in the
year where I looked up how to set the bands (or at least see which are
supported by the phone) and found that this app, at least for me, does that.
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ljh.networkmodesamsung>

The (apparently secretly hidden) Android Activity it calls is apparently
<com.samsung.android.app.telephonyui.hiddennetworksetting.MainActivity>
Based on what a free google free ad free gsf free shortcut inspector says
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cemique.shortcutwidgets>

As I'm always interested in learning more about phones, I ask
*What do you look for in "bands" available on your phone? And why?*

[Andy Burnelli]

On Sun, 9 Jan 2022 00:27:52 -0000 (UTC), Andy Burnelli wrote:

> I haven't thought all that much about what bands to select or what bands to
> unselect prior to The Real Bev bringing up the point about available bands.

Given most phones nowadays in our hands are already 5G phones, let's start
there where this reference explains the difference between 5G mm & 5G sub6.
<https://www.macrumors.com/guide/mmwave-vs-sub-6ghz-5g/>
"mmWave refers to higher frequency radio bands ranging from 24GHz to 40GHz,
and Sub-6GHz refers to mid and low-frequency bands under 6GHz."

"mmWave is the super-fast 5G that most people are talking about
when they talk about 5G speed improvements, and sub-6GHz,
the 5G that most people are going to experience for the time being."

For reference this has a list 5G bands which are currently available today.
<https://www.techplayon.com/5g-nr-frequency-bands/>

Note that NR (New Radio) has introduced a new notation for bands which start
with 'n' e.g. NR Band 20 is noted as n20 where in LTE it was termed as B20.

For reference these are the bands a typical free Android like mine supports.
<https://i.postimg.cc/ZKnwPGQ0/bands02.jpg>

If you actually pay for your phone, it should support more 5G frequencies.