Apple iOS 27 Beta 6 Starts Showing the 5G+ Mobile Symbol in the UK
A small but interesting development today. Apple released the latest iOS 27 Beta 6 software to developers yesterday and those who have updated their iPhone’s to the new firmware are finding that it finally shows a “5G+” symbol (or icon, if you prefer), when in areas covered by a 5G Standalone (5GSA) based mobile broadband network.
The 5G Standalone technology offers a pure end-to-end 5G network that can deliver ultra-low latency times, greater energy efficiency, better speeds (particularly uploads), network slicing, improved support for IoT devices, increased reliability and security etc. By comparison, early 5G networks used a Non-Standalone (NSA) approach, which was hobbled by being partly reliant upon slower 4G infrastructure.
At present not all mobile operators and devices will visually distinguish whether their customers are connected to a regular 5G NSA or 5G SA network. Most Smartphones will thus show a regular ‘5G‘ symbol regardless, while others might show ‘5GSA’ or ‘5G+’. Suffice to say, experiences do vary between devices and operators, but Apple’s shift to use a ‘5G+‘ symbol should help to set the pace for others. The change partly links back to yesterday’s EE news (here). The final iOS v27 release is due out next month.
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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For the record, iOS Beta 5 was doing this as well. Source: me. for the last week or so.
Its actually been there since at least iOS 27 Beta 5. Spotted it on my phone a few days ago when connected to O2’s 5GSA
Yeah, I believe there’s an element of support required from the mobile operator side too, so they’re not all doing it on the same beta/at the same time. But that’s my interpretation from speaking to those who work within such walls. Apple’s betas have been coming out quite quickly.
It’s been present since beta 4.
I noted the appearance of the 5G+ symbol on the forum here on the 20th of July.
What about Vodafone 5g standalone ?
Can any one spotted ?
Ye, 5G+ is showing for Vodafone UK as well.
This all should be other way round. 5G NSA should be displayed as 4G+/4Gturbo-ultra-quattro while 5G SA should be presented as 5g. Without all of this marketing bs.
Agreed. Fake 5G should be displayed as 4G+, SA NR as 5G and 5G+ should be reserved for mmWave (or fake 6G, which I have no doubt is coming)
Yes Voda 5G+ started showing on beta 5, also on samsung phone S26U 5G+ with O2 EE Voda all SA
On iPhone ?
Just need EE to stop gatekeeping it behind the expensive plans
It was on dev beta 5 and is on the current public beta (PB 3)