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Chances of iPhone 5 being LTE/4G Capable?

JasonR

JasonR

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 11, 2008
958
2
What are the chances of the iPhone 5 being 4G/LTE capable? I know no one knows for sure other than a few people at Apple, but I figured I'd ask here anyways. I really LOVE my iPhone 4, and have had an iPhone since the first iPhone, but I really want get a 4G phone. Verizon's 4G kicks ass, and there are several android phones (Droid Charge comes to mind) running 4G with good/decent battery life. I don't want to switch...but if the new iPhone doesn't have 4G / LTE I'm going to have to look real hard at switching to an android 4G phone.
 
I personally don't think LTE will make it into the iPhone 5 (but it will in the iPhone 6 for sure). My reasoning for this is mostly the battery life issue (although the charge actually has decent battery life for a LTE phone). The majority of LTE chips are such battery suckers and Apple wouldn't sacrifice battery life just to provide LTE. Plus you also have to keep in mind that the iPhone is released worldwide, not just in the US. Most of the world isn't using LTE technology so not many people would even be getting a benefit from that. Why put effort into introducing a feature that causes compromises and most people can't even use it?
 
Unlikely, since as of today AT&T's LTE is only available in 5 markets and they only plan on adding 10 more markets by the end of the year. Much more likely that it'l have HSPA+, if they were to make an upgrade to it. Otherwise my opinion is that they'll streamline the product line, making the iPhone CDMA and GSM capable. No LTE till next year to allow for more development of lower-powered radios and greater national coverage.
 
The iPhone 5 will NOT have 4G LTE, but WILL have HSPA+. Guaranteed. Case closed.

Tony
 
Since:
- lte is a huge battery drain
- Apple didn't even include 3g on the 1st iPhone due to battery life concerns

I'd have to say there is 0% chance that this years iPhone 5 has lte...
 
Last edited:
I think it will for a lot of reasons. Apple wanting to crush all being the main one. If they got that 2nd gen lte chip going good in a prototype (which they could have done way back in March) then the delay was for that me thinks. Qualcomm has said it wasn't true that they couldn't provide the quantity of chips, it was more on Apple to get a design going...no one knows what the new lte chips are doing in combination with newer processors and newer batteries. Could be huge.
 
i highly doubt Apple will go LTE.

But most importantly, most users would not care about LTE. Whats more important is latency. IF these carriers can reduce latency, webpages would load quicker.

Benefit for LTE would be for heavy tethering users, and heavy media consumption users. I'm not any of these.
 
aohus said:
i highly doubt Apple will go LTE.

But most importantly, most users would not care about LTE. Whats more important is latency. IF these carriers can reduce latency, webpages would load quicker.

Benefit for LTE would be for heavy tethering users, and heavy media consumption users. I'm not any of these.
Click to expand...

Great point aohus :)

I could care less if my internet is 3mbps as long as my ping is 20 :D
 
They will also not have HSPA + on iPhone 5. It will be a dual/ world phone with both CDMA/ GSM.

----------
ap3604 said:
Great point aohus :)

I could care less if my internet is 3mbps as long as my ping is 20 :D
Click to expand...

Great point. Verizon has very fast ping at least in my area. So web pages open as quickly as an AT&T iPhone in my area.
 
Kyotoma said:
Uhh Nothing in your post directly states that the next iPhone will have HSPA+ nor LTE.

Sorry. Case is Open and pending investigation. Sorry detective.
Click to expand...

It will definitely have HSPA+. All the latest chips have this capability.

I think when AT&T says they will not have an LTE phone until the end of the year and we know Apple is coming out with an iPhone 5 next month, it means it will not have LTE. At least on AT&T. Do you think they would come out with one for Verizon only? Use a two-chip design? It wouldn't be as thin as they want it to be.

I'm still getting it as HSPA+ is plenty fast with no battery life compromises.

The iPhone 6 will get LTE in late 2012.
 
ECUpirate44 said:
I'm not even excited for LTE anymore. At the rate the carriers are screwing us, were going to have a 2GB cap. Hell I have unlimited data now and I have a 2GB cap.
Click to expand...

Agreed pirate.

So with LTE we have:
+ insanely fast speeds
- horrible battery life
- throttling/overages coming soon

LTE is overrated imo compared to HSPA+ (at least we don't have the battery life issues).
 
Dmunjal said:
It will definitely have HSPA+. All the latest chips have this capability.
Click to expand...

There has been no evidence of an iPhone being tested with HSPA +, so this is your opinion, which is not much different than the opinion of people saying it will have LTE.
 
Take

[(Number of average people who understand what LTE is) / (Number of average people who understand what 4G is) X (Number of average people that can tell you the difference)]​

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


[(Number of individual threads on iPhone 5 predictions) + (Macrumors members who think they have one defective speaker)] - (Number of Pixels the menubar is off by according to TheSpaz)​

= Chance of iPhone 5 being LTE/4G capable.
 
Interstella5555 said:
Take

[(Number of average people who understand what LTE is) / (Number of average people who understand what 4G is) X (Number of average people that can tell you the difference)]​

__________________________________________________________________________________________


[(Number of indavidual threads on iPhone 5 predictions) + (Macrumors members who think they have on defective speaker)] - (Number of Pixels the menubar is off by according to TheSpaz)​

= Chance of iPhone 5 being LTE/4G capable.
Click to expand...

original.jpg

"Which car company do you work for?"
 
Yeah I dont think it will have LTE or HSPA+. LTE for obvious reasons. HSPA+ isnt used by all carriers and in the US, ATT's HSPA+ is spotty. T-Mobile has a fast HSPA+ network but the iPhone won't be coming to them.
 
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