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How to Enhance Your Android Apps with 5G?

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5G is the fifth generation of cellular technology, which not only improves download and upload speeds over cellular networks (1 Gbps speed) but also reduces latency. The time it takes for the network to respond. It also improves energy efficiency and provides a more stable network connection. Your apps now have the ability to support 5G thanks to Android 13. In this article, we will discuss the features and provides an outline of how incorporating 5G-specific features into your app might enhance user experience.

What 5G has to offer to your current Android apps

Consider the kinds of experiences you want to create when choosing how to use 5G. Among the ways 5G can improve your app are:

  1. Automatically improve current experiences by making them quicker and better due to 5G’s increases in latency and speed.
  2. Improve the user experience by displaying 4K video or downloading game files with higher resolutions, for example: Include services that are traditionally only available over Wi-Fi, such as proactive downloading of content typically reserved for unmetered Wi-Fi, after certifying that the user won’t pay more for the additional data use.
  3. Faster data downloads lead to more bandwidth being available.

The following functionality modifications and improvements are included in Android 13:

Although the concept of 5G was introduced back in Android 11, Android 13 further improves upon this and modifies the below-mentioned elements even more for a better system overhaul, which are:

  • 5G metering detection
  • Estimating bandwidth

A network callback registration

To be informed when NetworkCapabilities change, use registerDefaultNetworkCallback(). By overriding the onCapabilitiesChanged() method in your NetworkCallback, you may track changes to NetworkCapabilities. When a callback is registered, registerDefaultNetworkCallback() causes it to be activated instantly, providing the app with information about the current status. The apps must receive future callbacks in order to respond appropriately when the state switches from unmetered to metered or the other way around.

Check if the current connections are metered:

If your device has access to 5G, then as mentioned earlier in this article the bandwidth will be used more, so your app should be well aware of how to use the network, because if the network is non-metered.

NetworkCapabilities.hasCapability(NET_CAPABILITY_NOT_METERED) ||
NetworkCapabilities.hasCapability(NET_CAPABILITY_TEMPORARILY_NOT_METERED)

Further considerations with 5G and Android 13

Keep the following in mind as you use this functionality:

  • If you want to use the NET CAPABILITY TEMPORARILY NOT METERED flag, your app must be built using the Android 13 SDK.
  • On a network, the NET CAPABILITY NOT METERED capability is constant. If a network has this capacity, it will automatically disconnect if it loses it (becomes metered).
  • NET CAPABILITY TEMPORARILY NOT METERED, on the other hand, can be changed on a network without disconnecting. Since the network will no longer have the NET CAPABILITY TEMPORARILY NOT METERED capability, programs must wait for the onCapabilitiesChanged() callback to handle this situation.

GeekTip: It should be noted that while you can tell if you are connected to a 5G network, you cannot infer bandwidth or connection speed from this signal.

How to Detect if your app is over 5G

The onDisplayInfoChanged() method can be overridden to ascertain the display network type. One exception is that OVERRIDE NETWORK TYPE NR NSA is returned if the carrier chooses to present 5G as the RAT for their mmWave network. If you need to check how to check all the networks on which your app is currently running on, please refer to this article: How to Detect Cellular Network Type (2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G) in Android

Estimating bandwidth

The NetworkCapabilities object that you use to determine meteredness is used for bandwidth estimate. Using that object, bandwidth estimates are possible. Due to improvements in framework support and platform/modem bug fixes to support 5G, the bandwidth estimation methods getLinkDownstreamBandwidthKbps() and getLinkUpstreamBandwidthKbps() are more trustworthy and accurate in Android 11.

The bandwidth defaults solely offer advice for app startup. You should find this useful in the “start-up on idle” situation. Once users begin interacting with the app, your program should measure what it sees and dynamically modify its streaming behavior. For instance, you may base your decision on the video resolution to deliver on the bandwidth estimate at startup.

Conclusion

These are all the methods of how you can build apps for Android 13, which harness the true potential of what Android 13 can prove you to be. The things are flashy, super fast, and tremendous. If you can detect if your app is over 5G, then it is working, totally fine, you can continue ahead to take advantage of this extra speed, enhancements, and the extra bandwidth which will eventually increase your overall experience.


Last Updated : 26 Jan, 2023
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