5Ghz is hailed as a beneficial feature on an android head unit, but what is it?
5Ghz Android Headunit answers
No. It is not necessary to have 5Ghz for your android head unit to work, unless your phone hotspot doesn’t support 2.4Ghz.
Yes, if your phone supports 2.4Ghz wifi then you can hotspot your phone to the headunit.
What is 5Ghz
5Ghz refers to the alternative band of frequencies allocated to wifi transmission. The other band of frequencies is 2.4Ghz
5Ghz band was allocated to allow for faster transmission rates and opens up more channels from the more crowded 2.4Ghz band.
2.4Ghz
All android headunits with wifi can support 2.4Ghz and every smart phone can support 2.4Ghz. This gives the greatest chance of compatibility between the android headunit wifi and your phone hotspot. The 2.4Ghz technology has been well matured and compatibility issues are very rare now. For the greatest chance of connection, try the 2.4Ghz settings on both device first.
5Ghz
5Ghz comes into its own if your phone that you want to hotspot doesn’t support 2.4Ghz. It is unlikely for your android headunit to suffer from channel interference on the road. The 2.4Ghz congestion that 5Ghz tried to alleviate is found in high occupancy high rise buildings.
5Ghz gives you a second chance to connect to your phone hot spot if 2.4Ghz band is too congested. Your home router may not be 2.4Ghz enabled and connecting your headunit to the home wifi may require it being 5Ghz enabled.
Faster
Having a faster connection between your android headunit and the phone hotspot only becomes an advantage when you have a very fast SIM connection. This very fast SIM connection is 5G (5th generation mobile data). While the 5G SIM will still work in a 2.4Ghz hotspot, the connection will not be running at its maximum speed. You may not even notice this bottleneck but some just like things as fast as they can be.
No hotspot
If you don’t hot spot your phone for android headunit data connection but use a data sim then the 5Ghz is not relevant. You also have an option to use a mifi adaptor to alleviate the need to connect your phone as a hotspot, and the mifi adaptor will need to be 5Ghz enabled to take advantage of this feature on the android headunit.
Modern progress
5Ghz band for the android headunit wifi is just a modern progression. The android headunits are are generations behind their cousins: the android phone. It is a natural progression to see the new ideas from phone being applied to the android head unit products. It is encouraging to see these well established technologies being used to bring the android headunits up to date.
