On 12/10/25 09:57, D. Hugh Redelmeier via Talk wrote:

Quite so.  5G uses something called beam forming where the cell site sends a
narrow beam to the phone.  This takes a lot of math on both the phone and cell
site to work.  Add to this things like IPSec encryption, along with whatever
apps you use.
Historically, that stuff has been handled by the "baseband processor".  
That processor does not run Android. Partly because Linux isn't really a 
great hard-realtime OS.

My point is this sort of thing might not be as easy as some think. I remember the days of Winmodems, where you needed Windows to load the drivers into the dumb modem card. I don't know how clearly defined the boundary is, between what's built into the hardware and what might come with the OS.