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Apple Testing LTE in iOS 5 and Hiring More LTE Engineers

The US cell market is different than Europe, outside metro areas it is very spread out hence it needs more towers (and takes longer time to upgrade). I highly doubt Verizon or AT&T having any serious coverage before Spring.

What I think Apple is likely to do is release iPhone 5 as 3G, go back to the June cycle and release an LTE iPhone 6 in June 2012, which would be only a few months after LTE becomes 'the' standard.
 
jsh said:
Apple may be a US company, but their biggest market is China.
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Those are about the same size. For the price points that Apple sells its products, only a fraction of the Chinese populace can afford them. That fraction is much closer in size to the US than it is to the overall Chinese population. What China represents is growth, not practicular raw revenue. Apple is a growth junkie. It is the only thing that keeps the stock price hyperinflated.
 
cvaldes said:
Fact: the first commercial LTE deployments were in Scandivania. They have been running for a while.

Fact: there are a few other Northern Europe countries with partial LTE deployment. There are also a number of other countries who are rolling out LTE, but with no current commercial availability.

Fact: Germany's current LTE deployment is mostly in rural areas (there are a few urban networks) and the current intention is for people to use LTE modems on computers (which don't have the same sensitivity to battery life as mobile handsets).

Fact: there are many other non-European large iPhone markets with no LTE.

Assumption: there isn't a critical mass of commercially available LTE networks in large markets for Apple to release an LTE device at this time.

Assumption: Following Tim Cook's comments earlier this year, the poor performance of currently available LTE chips hasn't changed and won't until early 2012.

Assumption: a more plausible performance bump at this point would be the inclusion of HSPA+.
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Fact: within the next 24 months LTE will be widely deployed over Europe, e.g. as German Telcos were just allowed to enter the city (which they weren't before, as there was a law enforcing broadband in rural areas - to which LTE was the solution)

Fact: releasing a non LTE-iPhone will be the same as releasing the Edge-first generation iPhone - the battery-life strawman argument and the network strawman argument will appear in Apple's keynotes

Assumption: Anyone not buying a LTE-capable handset is not interested in future-proofing

Assumption: With the XOOM, HTC Flyer and Samsung Galaxy 10.1 already there and Google buying up Motorola we are bound to see LTE-Android smartphones by MWC2012 the latest

Assumption: iPhone6 will be the first LTE-capale phone by Apple, while iPad3 will have it earlier (as it is under 'feature pressure' considering the Droids)
 
With Verizon rolling out their LTE this past month even in this little corner of flyover country, there is no way I'm signing up for a two year contract for a 3G-only iPhone 5.
 
swagi said:
Assumption: With the XOOM, HTC Flyer and Samsung Galaxy 10.1 already there and Google buying up Motorola we are bound to see LTE-Android smartphones by MWC2012 the latest
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Fact: There are deployed LTE-Android smartphones now !

The latest of which, Droid Bionic, is due in a couple of weeks.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/18/droid-bionic-gets-4-3-inch-display-yours-for-299-on-september/

Google buying Moto was not the key factor in LTE getting deployed. Verizon needs LTE phones because they are at 50% deployed state now. This whole hand waving that LTE will be years in deployment... bunk. Most vendors will be at very large scale (50+%) deployments in a year once they start their production roll outs. The only folks that go slow will be those that are either broke (just finished a previous one) or have no, or very little, local competition.

The only difference Google + Moto will be is likely "Moto blur" and other vendor custom stuff won't go on the phone anymore. Moto may get the first drop of the latest bleeding edge Android version..... but do most vendors really want the x.x.0 version of the OS anyway. Xoom is just latest example of where they jumped the gun a shipping before fully "baked". I don't think many of the Android vendors are going to loose much sleep on not committing to early deployment of those future "first release" versions.


P.S. the other constraint that Apple has is that they likely want a "do everything" LTE radio. One iPhone will sell in multiple countries and multiple networks. A lower power LTE solution will likley come as a more limited configuration ( e.g., Samsung could do second generation of their LTE only solution) before the more broad-spectrum, more flexible solutions arrive next year.
 
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i dont know about LTE...

coolbreeze said:
Of course they are going LTE. Duh.

Now, to think the IP5, which is rumored to release in just over 39 days will have LTE, is insane.

So, it will be an IP4S with good 'ol 3G.
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but iPhone Pro its on his way for sure..
 
Wirelessly posted (Iphone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

I'll be shocked if the iPhone 5 is LTE. While I have an iPhone 4 and so am waiting this version out for my contract to expire, an LTE iPhone 5 would make me want it less. Despite what someone said on here, the A5 processor in the iPad 2 is a beast (just load up GarageBand on the two iPads and you'll see the huge difference) and the battery life of that thing plus a first gen LTE chip would be soul crushing. At the moment, all cellphone features work great on HSPA+, there's no real need for LTE until more services come out (like streaming tv or something) to actually take advantage of the 4G speeds. Until then, it will largely just drain the battery faster, making your phone less useful, not more so. This isn't like the difference between edge and 3G where one version can load web pages quickly and one takes forever, this is the difference of 2 second page loads to 1... only worth it if it's not detracting from the rest of the experience.
 
Lennholm said:
Good point! Still, I'll be surprised if the iPhone 5 actually does have LTE.




It will not flop at all. Apple can cut any features they want and people will still buy it because it's an iPhone. The vast majority of consumers don't know the difference between 3G and 4G anyway or even what data plan they're on, they just happily signed whatever contract they had to to get that iPhone.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg
 
A lot of people's balls would be blown off if the iPhone 5 had LTE. Especially if the battery life was good. Its coming to my area in November so I could make use of it.

I don't expect it to arrive, but it seems like an interesting time to all the sudden hear about this LTE testing and hiring. Also, how does one fit an LTE chip onto a test phone without the form of the phone already been predetermined to fit said LTE chip? I doubt the iPhone 5 is spacious enough on the inside to just stick whatever in there. Not sure how the whole testing thing really works I guess. They'd have fooled a bunch of people if it actually happened.
 
I have reason to believe we may see LTE in this next device. My source has made comments that certainly leave the door open more than just a crack. Having said that, I won't be shocked to see it slide to iPhone 6 either. What I do know is that there's a lot more happening in the LTE space network-wise than most people credit. So, I still stand by a greater than 50% chance of:

Emperor%2DPalpatine_lte.jpg
 
Nachoconqueso said:
Also, how does one fit an LTE chip onto a test phone without the form of the phone already been predetermined to fit said LTE chip? I doubt the iPhone 5 is spacious enough on the inside to just stick whatever in there. Not sure how the whole testing thing really works I guess. They'd have fooled a bunch of people if it actually happened.
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Nah, the LTE-equipped prototypes are probably in cases that have extra space. It's not like Apple would ship these, they are simply being used to test and develop the LTE software in anticipation of the Qualcomm MDM9615, sampling later this year with production availability in early 2012.

My guess is that LTE chips have been used in iPhone 4 protos as well as various candidate designs of the iPhone 5. Assuming a late September/early October ship date for the iPhone 5, the final hardware design of the upcoming handset is surely locked down (PVT/ramp which is the final design phase before steady state production).

If you were invited to a secret lab in Cupertino and got to see these LTE phones, they would probably look like Franken-phones, not like anything in a shippable case.
 
Why believe Tim Cook at this stage? They also denied they were going to release a phone and tablet, then a few months later, ta da!

Why would AT&T install LTE equipment in an Apple store for a phone that won't arrive for a year?
 
HSPA+ is the next iPhone

Take a long look at AT&T's revamped Coverage Map with the expansive and updated 4G/3G map that shows the 4G in the large markets now HSPA+ with enhanced fiber backhaul.

http://www.att.com/network/

Click on the Coverage sub tab. It makes it clear that LTE is coming soon but the HSPA+ + fiber backhaul they just spent the past 18 months and several billion in build out is now lit.

The next iPhone will be HSPA+/3G/2G compliant.

LTE will be arriving after the new backhaul has been enhanced with LTE equipment.
 
With the iPhone 4 only a year old, the significant majority of customers (in the US) would only be mid-way through their contract.

If the iPhone 5 has LTE or is a major upgrade along the line of the original to the 3G, I could see AT&T doing what they did when the 3G came out mid-way through the two-year contract of owners of the original iPhone - allowing existing customers to secure the 3G at the subsidized price by accepting a new two-year contract.

But if the iPhone 5 doesn't have LTE and the iPhone 6 (or iPhone5LTE) ships in late Q1/early Q2 2012 (perhaps alongside the iPad3, which itself would have LTE), then AT&T either won't allow existing customers to upgrade except at full cost or they let the customer base upgrade and six months later that customer base revolts when Apple releases another iPhone.

So could Apple hold back LTE until this time next year and the iPhone 6? Assuming AT&T offers the same upgrade path from the 4 to the 5 that they did from the original to the 3G, that would give customers two options - upgrade now and skip the iPhone 6 (as many did by upgrading to the 3 and skipping the 3GS) or wait another year and complete your contract and then get the iPhone 6.
 
bdkennedy1 said:
Why believe Tim Cook at this stage? They also denied they were going to release a phone and tablet, then a few months later, ta da!

Why would AT&T install LTE equipment in an Apple store for a phone that won't arrive for a year?
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The LTE ready equipment will also work with the HSPA+/3G/2G connectivity. The in-house wireless will be lit very much like 10GB Ethernet has support for 1GB Ethernet/100BaseT/10BaseT did for Switches/Routers.

The network will send traffic at the available rate supported by the client. In this case, those modems serving traffic will send data for LTE when available, HSPA+, 3G and 2G [legacy beginning to start phasing out when LTE/4G is phased in] for the devices floating around in the store requesting access.

Alcatel-Lucent's FP3 Processor is a huge breakthrough for the backhaul.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/fp3/

Read up: http://www2.alcatel-lucent.com/hln/

This explains how the back end paves the wave for the client to follow.

The Telcos and large businesses will deploy these solutions.

Top LTE Vendor List: http://lteworld.org/blog/top-lte-vendors-number-analysis

So, that equipment is most likely Alcatel Lucent installed equipment to test LTE and HSPA+/CDMA2k 1x for AT&T and Verizon within the Apple store so that both vendors phones fly on all the iPhones/iPads running around in the stores.

AT&T to launch LTE devices on August 21
http://lteworld.org/news/att-launch-lte-devices-august-21

The device is an LTE/HSPA+ device.

Yes, Apple will target the HSPA+ on the client until the client chipsets are improved.
 
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bdkennedy1 said:
Why would AT&T install LTE equipment in an Apple store for a phone that won't arrive for a year?
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We don't know for certain that it was LTE equipment installed in those stores. If it could be confirmed, Apple could be using it for the HSPA+ connectivity right now and maybe LTE in the future.

Also, if Apple ships LTE-capable devices, there is a good chance that they would start with the iPad 3 next spring, not the iPhone 5. There is nothing that says that all new technologies must emerge on the iPhone first. After all, Apple moved to the A5 SoC on the iPad 2.
 
So 4G/LTE=unlimited data??

I love my unlimited data on my iPhone 4. AT&T data plan does not meet my usage I always go over 2GB a month...I hope AT&T/verizon makes data plan better prices..
 
whatever said:
People need to remember that it is not worth Apple's time to support LTE in the iPhone until LTE is available in the US.

Many of the countries in Europe that have LTE are smaller than Texas. If a majority of the EU had LTE then it would be different.

Please remember Apple's biggest market is the US and they are a US company.
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When you say smaller, do you mean geographically, or population, because geographic size means nothing. The UK is smaller than most states, yet has a population of 61.8 Million people. If it was a US State, it'd have the highest population of all of them.
 
LTE is really only "great" for tethering. Its great for web surfing but far from necessary. If data caps weren't so low, it would be great for streaming content but... the cell companies would rather have fast networks not being used.

Honestly doesn't make a difference if they have this or not. Until we get some cell companies competing with AT&T / Verizon with speeds, coverage, and unlimited plans... 3G is fine with wifi when available.
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
This is a good point. If Apple were only testing LTE, they wouldn't deploy the LTE equipment to their stores so far in advance of the release of a product that would use it. Apple would deploy it on their own campus to test it, not in their stores worldwide.
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Not necessarily. It's possible Apple's getting ready to deploy it in another product (iPad 3, or even a new laptop refresh).
 
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