Cutting-edge personal comms tech has – literally – nothing to say for itself

So long 5G tariff. Farewell 5G handset. Auf Wiedersein multi-gigabit promises. Adieu to yer and yer and yer.

At Christmas, you may remember – egads, was that when I last had time to write one of these chronicles (i.e. do like a modern slave and work for nothing)? – 5G was to be my big present to myself. I’d signed up for a one-month 5G trial upgrade from my mobile provider and obtained a short-term loan of one of the less exciting Apple iPhone 12s, all just in time for the big day.

Well not the big day obviously. December 25th in the Dabbs household is strictly a pyjama-based affair involving [puts on Cliff Richard dyed chest wig] mistletoe and mulled wine, grog and Gregorian chants, TV and torn paper, books, blankets, bubbly and most importantly the correct steaming of sprouts. Honestly, if you boil them you deserve all you get. Anyway, venturing outdoors to locate the nearest 5G mast is not on the agenda.

Boxing Day’s no problem. Throwing open the windows to let the post-digestive sprout gases escape, we were welcomed by a sunny sky and the early bustle of Saturday’s street market. It was a perfect morning to go on a suburban signal hunt.

Except… upgrading a G isn’t something one does frequently so it’s easy to forget the preliminary steps to ensure a smooth transition. It turns out that inserting your SIM into the new phone, restarting it 20 times, trying to get it to G-up by willing it to happen and shouting come on you stupid bugger does not actually work.

No, all you have to do is switch off Wi-Fi and leave the phone alone for a couple of hours. The network eventually, grudgingly, acknowledges that you have paid shitloads of sponds for a 5G-capable handset and contract, and reluctantly messages you a service update with all the haste of a surly teenager being called downstairs to eat more sprouts. Update done, you are rewarded with a tiny ‘5G’ icon, a one-bar signal and an overwhelming feeling of disappointment.

We set off for a walk, Mme D greeting neighbours with polite conversation, me pointing and waving my sparkly 5G smartphone around like a sonic screwdriver. At no point did reception rise above two bars, even though my locality was marked on my provider’s map as being in a 5G service area. More often than not, my phone fell straight back to a pretty decent 4G.

Worse, I know exactly where the 5G transmitters were because 5G reception improved when I pointed my phone directly at them – they’re mounted on the water tower on the hill behind the house. The only place indoors that achieves any measure of 5G reception is at my bedroom window from which, not coincidentally, I can see said water tower. Basically, as long as I can see the tower and I’m pointing my phone in its direction, I get 5G; otherwise I don’t.

I don’t know much about 5G technology but I hadn’t expected it to rely on line-of-sight. In my mind, that makes it a somewhat oversold modern equivalent of infra-red. Or perhaps I’m just dim when it comes to telecoms: maybe I’ll quit my career in IT and retrain as a ballerina. Whatever the reason, my feeble 5G signal at the bedroom window gave me speeds of around 2Mbit/sec; on 4G, in any room in the house, I get 10 to 15 times as much throughput.

The next day, I downgraded my contract and packaged up the 5G handset for return. Talk about a load of hype. I’ll give it until the end of the year before I consider trying again.

Which reminded me… the time has come around again for me to check how far voice assistants have improved since I last gave them a go, about a year ago, when they were still shite.

Not without reluctance, I allowed Siri to enable itself on my iPad Pro. For extra comedy value, I run iOS in French, so Siri insisted that I train it to recognise when I utter "Dis, Siri" (on se tutoie, alors?) and ask about the weather dans la langue de Molière. It took a few goes but Siri eventually understood once I donned a pith helmet and yelled.

However, since then, Siri has remained a silent partner. It hasn’t a clue what I’m saying and has now even given up asking me to repeat my requests. I cry "Dis, Siri!" and the animated Siri icon appears with a slightly unpleasant "bi-donk" sound – then nothing. The icon continues to swirl, which I think means Siri’s all ears. But after politely listening, Siri waits another couple of seconds and fucks off without uttering a word. I swear I can hear it shrugging in a gallic fashion on its way out, une Gauloises numérique hanging from its lips.

This is especially annoying given that the kind of things I say to Siri are work-related, and the French language of work and technology is mostly English. And not just everything from "le business school" and "le team building" to "le click-and-collect": even "numérique" has been ditched in favour of "digitale", which only looks French because they stuck an "e" at the end of it. All I can think of is that I am not pronouncing my English words with an accent that is French enough for Siri to understand.

The misappropriation of English terms can make for light amusement, of course. Not that they’re English terms anyway: they’re invariably American. Where an Brit might toke on a spliff or dope, for example, the French refer to cannabis as "shit". Hence someone at Midi Libre thought it would be clever to headline a news story about ordering illegal cannabis supplies online as "Shit & collect", which I naturally thought was going to be a story on a more scatological theme.

The final straw came last weekend during the Six Nations (rugby union) opening match between France and Italy.

I was watching the live stream on my iPad Pro in the kitchen while doing the cooking. Every time the game started to get interesting and the commentators began raising their voices in fake excitement, there’d be a "bi-donk!", the idiot spinning Siri icon would appear for for several seconds for no good reason before vanishing and the video would crap out. By the time I’d got the stream running again, I’d missed another try.

Since I wasn’t doing any talking, I can only assume Siri thought one of the commentators at France 2 had shouted "Dis, Siri!" in the heat of the moment. With an English accent. Five times.

What could they have been saying? One of the players on the French team has the first name "Cyril" – could it have been that? There’s also a player with the surname "Cretin", which funnily enough is what I was shouting at Siri each time it froze the match.

Siri is now disabled. Quel crétin. Don’t speak to me, see if I care. Take this 5G tower and shove it up your bi-donk.

Hmm, I dunno. Maybe I’ll give it another year.

ALISTAIR DABBS is a freelance technology tart, juggling tech journalism, training and digital publishing. This weekly chronicle was intended to appear on Fridays but the mid-week schedule is getting congested, hence the hiatus. I might switch it to Mondays. Or I might not. I’ll ask Alexa what I should do. More in Something for the Weekend, Sir? every Friday at The Register.