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Is 3G A Hardware or Software Function?
- Thread starter wrkactjob
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No, it doesn't use WiFi. The iPhone already has WiFi. It uses HSDPA, which is ATT's 3G protocol. It offers DSL-like data transfer. This includes voice.
3G is a combination of hardware and software. Essentially, you need the hardware, so no firmware update would do it (unless you could plug in a 3G adapter to your phone, but that doesn't seem likely. Then again, the contraption is useless without (proprietary) software that interprets the data.
As an electronic engineer, I can authoritatively say it's a hardware change. But most people know that already.
Maybe one day we will have entirely software-based radios. It's not going to happen any time soon, though: new standards typically mean higher data rates, and software can't keep up with all the processing that can be done in hardware.
Maybe one day we will have entirely software-based radios. It's not going to happen any time soon, though: new standards typically mean higher data rates, and software can't keep up with all the processing that can be done in hardware.