Path: ...!3.eu.feeder.erje.net!feeder.erje.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Don Y Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design Subject: Re: "Safe" cell phone WiFi capabilities? Date: Mon, 20 May 2024 04:23:14 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 57 Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Mon, 20 May 2024 13:23:17 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="5d80f1dc6dc80e940061abf9488d5484"; logging-data="4157775"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19hNwvZqrXFvautaXz6zd12" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/102.2.2 Cancel-Lock: sha1:xPJ9ExnaF10v+zVsdLPlsmgzHqM= In-Reply-To: Content-Language: en-US Bytes: 3521 On 5/20/2024 4:02 AM, Dan Purgert wrote: > On 2024-05-17, Don Y wrote: >> On 5/17/2024 5:55 AM, Dan Purgert wrote: >>> On 2024-05-17, Don Y wrote: >>>> For "nominal" cell phones (i.e., taking into consideration >>>> that not ever subscriber buys The Latest and Greatest), >>>> what's the "base" WiFi capability one would feel comfortable >>>> assuming? ac? ax? >>> >>> Assuming you're limiting the question to the set of cellphones that >>> actually implement wifi, 802.11b ... but what are you *REALLY* trying to >>> ask for? >> >> There are several different "generations" of WiFi, each with >> different effective (data) bandwidths. >> >> The most commonly referenced include: 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, >> 802.11n, 802.11ac, 802.11ax and, most recently, 802.11be. The > > It's almost like that list is ... all of the options. > >> [Note that n is a ~2008 era technology while ac is ~2015 >> and ax is ~2020. Does this suggest that any phone made >> "within the last 5 years" -- an interval Martin suggests >> should cover "most" phones now in use -- should be "ax"?] > > No. /FLAGSHIP/ models certainly have a high chance of supporting > 802.11ax, but that doesn't mean "any" phone. > > Again, what are you *REALLY* trying to ascertain here? I am trying to figure out what the "basic" WiFi capabilities of "the vast majority" of cell phones currently in use are likely to be. Martin suggests phones have a useful life of 5 years. If so, the majority of phones currently in use were likely designed long after 802.11a/b (1999), g (2003), n (2008), ac (2014) and even ax (2019). If a phone does NOT support WiFi (perhaps some of the "closed" markets?), then it has no impact on the data. > The most basic support is still 802.11b; and that'll probably be kind of > "forever" (at least until 2.4 GHz is completely abandoned), same as how > 10mbit is still the most basic ethernet-over-twisted-pair support. But, in practice, most phones support something more capable than 802.11b -- just like most enets support something more capable than 10BaseT/2. Designing for the lowest POSSIBLE vs. LIKELY means unnecessarily limiting the capabilities that you can exploit. [would you design an enet device that ONLY expected to be capable of accessing 10mb bandwidth]