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Verizon's 5G network will get a surprise gift with the Android 11 update

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By Daniel Petrov

Updated: May 21, 2020, 7:09 AM

Verizon's 5G network will get a surprise gift with the Android 11 update

АТ&T has been in hot water lately, after T-Mobile challenged its use of the terms "5G Evolution" marketing with the National Advertising Division unit of BBB National Programs, and won.

An appeal by AT&T didn't prevent the ban on its use of the phrases "5G Evolution" or "5G Evolution, The First Step to 5G" in marketing materials, yet the carrier said that the most visible identification of its campaign, the "5GE" mark in your phones' status bar, is here to stay.

Needless to say, Verizon had to do something to indicate that it is running a true 5G network, and its customer's phones are depicting "5G UWB" in their notification bar at all times when you are hooked up to Big Red's downtown Ultra Wideband mmWave networks.

Android 11 and the '5G+' mmWave network

Tucked in the Android 11 API developer guidelines is a certain gem of a feature that is coming to phones with the update. It turns out that the "5GE" mark will be here to stay in Android code as well, but as far as Verizon's fast mmWave network goes, that one will be depicted as "5G+".

Various 5G icon display solutions for different carriers are provided by this new API. The supported technologies include the following:

LTE
LTE with carrier aggregation (LTE+)
Advanced pro LTE (5Ge)
NR (5G)
NR on millimeter-wave cellular bands (5G+)

Thus, you'll be able to know at all times whether you are on a low-band or high-band 5G connection, which may very well be the difference between 100Mbps and 1Gbps peak speeds. Still, T-Mobile's new buildout of 5G on Sprint's mid-band 2.5GHz network in New York recently clocked 1Gbps+ speeds, and it probably won't be shown as 5G+ on an Android 11 phone since it's not mmWave, riddle us this.

Well that was unexpected... Just two weeks after the 2.5GHz NYC launch, @TMobile upgrades the NR bandwidth from 40 to 60MHz!
NR spectral efficiency further improves... 1.2Gbps. pic.twitter.com/wDZBB6Ml4X
— Milan Milanović (@milanmilanovic) May 19, 2020

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Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena from 2010 to 2025, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.