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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

> but iOS updates can’t be done on 4G

> This isn’t an “anecdote” or an edge case, not everyone lives in a developed country and millions are just like my grandma

In too many countries, mobile data is incredibly expensive. If Apple were to allow over-the-air OS updates, you can bet it would take only a week until the first class-action lawsuit by people having their data caps blown through because they did not understand that updates are huge.

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In many other countries, 4G is so inexpensive that many people use it as their primary Internet connection though.

They don't see a need for a modem hooked to a wired line necessitating a second subscription and procedures to follow when you move apartments, when in any case you will have a 4G connection that follows you around on your smartphone.

I've been using 5G as my primary internet connection since January 2020. It's much faster than wired broadband in buildings that don't have fibre installed. It's also cheaper (I pay £30/month for unlimited data), there's no contract locking you in to 12 or 24 months of service, and I can take it with me whenever I travel or if I move house.

If you have a desktop, how do you provide the 5G connection?

Is there a better way than providing a wifi hotspot with your mobile phone?

I have a Huawei E6878-870 5G mobile WiFi (other brands are available), which provides a "proper" WiFi base station, so no need for a phone hotspot. I have a separate cheap SIM card for my phone.

I get that, but given that some countries have insanely restrictive Wi-Fi data caps (I heard 200GB, which I would probably blow through in a week or less), I don't see the problem. Even if updates-over-4G are disabled by default, power users should be able to turn it on. My grandma has 70GB for 15€ a month; she only makes FaceTime calls, so uses on average 4GB of data a month. I'd love to use SharePlay to share her screen, and teach her how to use her phone, but that won't be possible, because she can't install the update; it'll have to wait until the next time I travel to see her.

I hear that Android lets you enable updates-over-4G, but allows carriers to block the feature. That's detestable! Surely, if I pay for data, I should be able to use it for anything (legal) I deem important? I don't like corporations making those decisions for me.

> My grandma has 70GB for 15€ a month

I'm German, and ... wtf, I'm envious. We have three carriers: O2 (which is cheap, but their network is horrible), Vodafone (which is expensive, has a good network, and is constantly plagued by issues with its customer service) and Telekom (expensive, good network and decent customer service).

Telekom's cheapest plan is 40€ a month which has 6GB, and the biggest plan before flat-rate (at 85€) is 24 GB for 60€ a month...

To be fair, looking around a bit, you can get

14 GB for 13€ (https://www.handyvertrag.de - it's a brand of Drillish, reseller of the O2/Telefónica/E-Plus network)

40 GB for 19€ (https://bestellung.vitrado.de/offer/index/2b5pv1)

Yeah, all of that is O2. The problem is, their service is straight shit outside and barely tolerable inside of urban areas at best. My s/o is on their network, it's ridiculous.

Google makes you explicitly confirm that you want to download using cellular each time you update, noting that it might induce charges. There, fixed, how come geniuses at apple haven’t considered this? Given how nowadays there’s a toggle for 5G and someone on hn told me it’s due to contract with carriers, I reckon the answer is that sweet sweet money.

Given they can apply censorship per region I'm sure they could apply a simple setting change per region if they wanted to.

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