Don't even bother with CDMA. Stick with Intel, Apple. GSM all the way. Just my 2 cents.
I think you and some others are really confused about networks, and about Qualcomm.
- 4G LTE and beyond are tied to neither GSM nor CDMA2000.
- Qualcomm was not only about CDMA (a radio type which GSM used for 3G, btw), but is also a primary inventor and patent holder for 4G and beyond.
Good to see Apple giving business to a company known for its ENGINEERING, not a company that's basically a giant legal department.
Qualcomm spends billions creating thousands of patented mobile & cellular inventions each year. You are using their engineering whenever you use 3G, 4G, and soon 5G.
An Intel modem, and the iPhone which uses it, both rely on a lot of engineering by Qualcomm and other companies.
It doesn't matter whose modem is in a phone. Qualcomm (and many other standards contributors) all must be paid a royalty. Here are some of the LTE patent holders, for example:
Apple has sued Noka, Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung, and now Qualcomm, all in attempts to force lower rates. It's all about wanting to make even more profits.
I’d seen some people on this forum making remarks about 5G being a health hazard. Do you know anything about that? Or is that the generalized fear of cellular that’s been around for awhile?
It's based on the same unwarranted fear of the word "radiation".
When radio engineers talk about "radiation", they mean electromagnetic waves "radiating from" an antenna, much like ripples in a pond or how we say that a person "radiates" joy.
The problem is, naive people visit scare sites that deliberately try to associate "radio wave radiation" with truly dangerous "nuclear ionizing radiation".