how to turn off 5G

Not sure what you mean but there are no 5G phones yet. Your phone shouldn’t be capable of receiving 5G. What makes you think you are? 

My status bar, next to the signal strength indicator, says 5G E. Sometimes, not all the time. How does one turn this off?

Oh, thank you. Hopefully we can opt out of 5G when they start forcing it. Probably not, though. Thanks again, such a relief.

Why would you want to opt out? 

That’s like saying you don’t want to use the commuter lane.  You would  rather sit in the slow lane with the traffic jam on the highway.   Why?  

Btw, until you own a 5g phone, you cannot use 5g.  

I think 5G is a lot more about marketing, than anything else, at this point.

Granted, latency is a bit less, and, in theory, high-density implementation should be better, but do we really need the speed?  

I challenge someone to show (hotspot/tethering excluded) to come up with a scenario where anyone needs that kind of bandwidth, on a cell, at this point in tech.

Take a 20MB file, which would take about 2 seconds to download (pretty big file, for most cell use), on a solid LTE connection, today.  Okay, so it takes 0.1-0.3 seconds, on a (good) 5G connection, is that really relevant?
Maybe, in some scenarios, where you're trying to download a movie, right before a plane flight, but really you're a lot more likely to hit another bottleneck, such as your SSD speed, the server(s) with the movie, your physical RAM and its' cache speeds, and much more (not even taking bus speeds into account).

Realistically, you probably will never know if your download was over a 20mbps connection, 100, 200, gig, or similar, because there are so many other bottlenecks/factors in the mix.

I've written a lot of tests, designed to test for speed/latency thresholds, but at some point, there's really a "diminishing return", on most end-point setups (PC, cell, tablet); obviously server(s) are a different deal (and why 10G+ is important, for some implementations).

On a cell setup, you're going to use your 22GB, or whatever, in a really, really short amount of time, if you're actually pulling data at anywhere close to bandwidth (even on say a 150 LTE setup).

I'm FAR more interested in reduced latency, myself, which is why our home setup has a very carefully load-balanced dual-WAN setup.  Sure the connections have plenty of "bandwidth" (about 1.25G, which exceeds most PC and other NICs now anyway), but really I designed the balancing layout to avoid latency for a given set of data-types, not to maximize "speed/throughput".  I think it's easy to confuse low-latency for speed anyway, for most users, excepting those moving VERY large amounts of data.

Anyway, my $0.02 on the deal ;-]

5G will be good, because it will improve on latency and congestion as well, but how much is really going to take a while to "prove itself", in the real world, IMO.

But, like everyone has noted, there are no 5G phones yet (but will be soon), and only a few cell networks, in a few cities, that are ready for them, at this point.

Oh yeah, and the "bad guys" are going to like it too, because it's going to make "compromised" devices a lot more efficient, in terms of the stuff they want to do ;-]

@pgrey

want to bet customers won’t be able to keep their current unlimited plans if the upgrade to 5g phones?    They did that when basic phones went out.  

@lizdance40

Yeah, that'd be kinda' humorous, not to mention insanely ironic ;-]

"Here's this phone with a crazy-fast modem, have fun!  Oh, yeah, you might have a tendency to use up your months' data in a few seconds, if you're not careful, keep an eye on that..."  ;-O

I'm in no big hurry to have any sort of 5G phone (for all the reasons in my too-long diatribe ;-]), but the 955 chipset has a lot of other good reasons to make it appealing.

I still don't understand though, how they're going to handle voice, when they re-purpose more and more of their retired 2G and 3G spectrum, for 5G or upgraded LTE.  Something's going to have to give, or they'll have to do away with BYOD or something...

They expect us to talk with our thumbs rather than call.  

Im thinking we are due some unrest when vast areas of the US are suddenly without coverage.