iPhone users in Malaysia can soon enjoy 5G Standalone (5G SA) and 5G Advanced with an upcoming iOS update.
Several users with iOS 26.4 Beta were able to enable 5G SA on their iPhones, which indicates that support will be made available to the wider public.
At the moment, two telcos officially offers 5G SA and 5G Advanced in Malaysia, namely Yes 5G and U Mobile. However, when it comes to device compatibility, they currently only support a handful of Android devices.
As shown above, we managed to connect to Yes 5G Advanced on our iPhone Air running on iOS 26.4 Developer Beta.
After the iOS update, the Voice & Data page now shows a new 5G Standalone option as well as Voice over 5G Standalone. Once enabled, a supported telco will allow you to make voice calls while maintaining a steady 5G connection. Without the feature enabled, a typical 5G (NSA) connection would drop to 4G (VoLTE) whenever you make or receive a voice call.
In case you didn’t know 5G SA is widely regarded as “true 5G” as it does not rely on existing 4G infrastructure as an anchor. As a result, users on 5G SA would get lower latency, wider coverage and better battery life.
On Yes 5G Advanced, users can expect wider and deeper coverage compared to 5G NSA (Non-Standalone) as their network utilises both 700MHz and 3500MHz spectrum to carry data traffic.
Since 5G SA runs purely on a 5G core, users can expect lower battery consumption as the device connects only to 5G for both voice and data, versus having to maintain simultaneous connections to both 4G and 5G networks
According to a community tracker on GitHub that monitors iOS carrier support, iOS 26.4 will enable 5G SA for Maxis, U Mobile and Yes 5G. Meanwhile, CelcomDigi and Yoodo are listed as not supported yet.
iOS 26.4 is currently in Beta phase and it is expected to be released sometime in late March or early 2026.
Thanks @nukm4n for the tip!
