Did apple leave the 3rd antenna out on purpose?

T

Tfalsetta

macrumors newbie
Now that is has been determined that Verizon and sprint will not be able to support simultanous *voice and data on the iPhone 5 (even in LTE) because apple did NOT add the 3rd antenna (like Samsung and others did to work on CDMA).*
The reason apple said they did this was for manufacturing reasons.*

Do you feel apple did this for manufacturing reasons? Or to spite Verizon for bad mouthing the iPhone for so long (if you ever called or stopped into a Verizon store they always steer you away from the iPhone)? *
 
They probably did it because if it was included the iPhone 5 would not be as thin as it is.
 
Tfalsetta said:
Do you feel apple did this for manufacturing reasons? Or to spite Verizon for bad mouthing the iPhone for so long (if you ever called or stopped into a Verizon store they always steer you away from the iPhone)? *
Click to expand...

It would be extremely short sighted for Apple to do something like that out of spite. Also, Sprint and their other CDMA carriers would be affected.

Chances are that Apple didn't think making a significant change such as adding a third antenna was worth the effort considering that the CDMA carriers don't require SVDO compatibility, and the issue will go away in a year or so (in time for the "5S") when the carriers start adopting Voice over LTE.
 
KPOM said:
It would be extremely short sighted for Apple to do something like that out of spite. Also, Sprint and their other CDMA carriers would be affected.

Chances are that Apple didn't think making a significant change such as adding a third antenna was worth the effort considering that the CDMA carriers don't require SVDO compatibility, and the issue will go away in a year or so (in time for the "5S") when the carriers start adopting Voice over LTE.
Click to expand...

It's not purely CDMA issue though. While iPhone 5 will be able to support simultaneous voice and data on GSM carriers, it will still be crippled even there. It still does not support simultaneous voice and LTE data. The data transmission in this case will be downgraded to 3G. Better than nothing but not the best.
 
At any rate it's a tough pill to swallow, but I have moved beyond the emotional base to the fact base that we finally have an LTE phone. I know that's what Apple wants us to do, accept whatever they say as a good enough reason, but I can always surf on my iPad while on the phone.
 
Why would they want to spite Verizon? They're partners. Apple sells billions of dollars worth of iPhones on Verizon's network, they would never purposely do something that could change that.
 
Tfalsetta said:
Now that is has been determined that Verizon and sprint will not be able to support simultanous *voice and data on the iPhone 5 (even in LTE) because apple did NOT add the 3rd antenna (like Samsung and others did to work on CDMA).*
The reason apple said they did this was for manufacturing reasons.*

Do you feel apple did this for manufacturing reasons? Or to spite Verizon for bad mouthing the iPhone for so long (if you ever called or stopped into a Verizon store they always steer you away from the iPhone)? *
Click to expand...

I haven't researched this yet, but are you sure the issue is the antenna and not the chipset? Those other phones your talking about, I believe have a 3G chip and a 4G chip. I believe this is how they can do simultaneous voice and data. Same with SVDO on CDMA IIRC.

Again, I haven't looked deeply into this, but that's my suspicion.

Edit: I was mistaken. http://www.anandtech.com/show/6295/...ous-voice-and-lte-or-evdo-svlte-svdo-support-
 
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Whether or not it can do both on Verizon is not as important as how good the LTE chip is in the Iphone 5. if it is the same one being used by the Samsung Galaxy S3 on Verizon, then there may be a lot of problems with connectivity to LTE. Verizon is having a lot of problems with that phone.

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Geckotek said:
I haven't researched this yet, but are you sure the issue is the antenna and not the chipset? Those other phones your talking about, I believe have a 3G chip and a 4G chip. I believe this is how they can do simultaneous voice and data. Same with SVDO on CDMA IIRC.

Again, I haven't looked deeply into this, but that's my suspicion.
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It requires 3 antennas. Iphone 5 only has 2.
 
lilo777 said:
It's not purely CDMA issue though. While iPhone 5 will be able to support simultaneous voice and data on GSM carriers, it will still be crippled even there. It still does not support simultaneous voice and LTE data. The data transmission in this case will be downgraded to 3G. Better than nothing but not the best.
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However, this isn't unique to the iPhone. Currently that's how GSM LTE networks handle voice and data simultaneously. They drop down into 3G, which handles all voice transmissions, and is capable of handling data. SVDO and SVLTE are CDMA concepts since the original CDMA spec didn't allow simultaneous voice and data.
 
could they not have one antenna for voice and one antenna for data? (if you chose to via the software) i know they added two antennas for better reception but yeahh just thinking.
 
This is one of those Apple decisions that's planning 2-3 years ahead, but which pisses people off now. Evolving 4G LTE technology will make the 3rd antenna unnecessary within a couple of years at most. Meanwhile, it's not worth the numerous tradeoffs required just to enable a feature that the vast majority of users won't ever even feel the absence of. You will be able to do voice/data when connected to wifi, so it's only a very specific circumstance where anyone would be affected by this.
 
Nope, not on purpose, by complete accident. They are now freaking out that they accidentally left it out. It'll cost them billions to fix everyone's phones.
 
EdwardSung said:
This is one of those Apple decisions that's planning 2-3 years ahead, but which pisses people off now. Evolving 4G LTE technology will make the 3rd antenna unnecessary within a couple of years at most. Meanwhile, it's not worth the numerous tradeoffs required just to enable a feature that the vast majority of users won't ever even feel the absence of. You will be able to do voice/data when connected to wifi, so it's only a very specific circumstance where anyone would be affected by this.
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This is my thinking as well. And a very Apple-ish type of thing to do. Kind of like Flash.
 
RxMac said:
Nope, not on purpose, by complete accident. They are now freaking out that they accidentally left it out. It'll cost them billions to fix everyone's phones.
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I really don't think this is the case. Why? Because it's completely in line with Apple philosophy. They have very low tolerance for technology that is on its way out. When they stopped making computers with floppy drives, they were still in common use but clearly on the edge of being obsolete. Same situation as with optical drives, which I only use now to make discs for my mother-in-law. Every time they do this, there's consternation from those people who still use the outdated tech, but Apple has always been willing to piss off a vocal minority in order to push tech standards forward.

This was clearly a design choice. Mainly because the absence of it doesn't result in a "broken" phone that needs to be "fixed," but rather just an absent feature, and one that will be a moot issue in a couple of years when the tech catches up with the phone.
 
EdwardSung said:
I really don't think this is the case. Why? Because it's completely in line with Apple philosophy. They have very low tolerance for technology that is on its way out. When they stopped making computers with floppy drives, they were still in common use but clearly on the edge of being obsolete. Same situation as with optical drives, which I only use now to make discs for my mother-in-law. Every time they do this, there's consternation from those people who still use the outdated tech, but Apple has always been willing to piss off a vocal minority in order to push tech standards forward.

This was clearly a design choice. Mainly because the absence of it doesn't result in a "broken" phone that needs to be "fixed," but rather just an absent feature, and one that will be a moot issue in a couple of years when the tech catches up with the phone.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure the post you quoted was a sarcastic one.
 
EdwardSung said:
I really don't think this is the case. Why? Because it's completely in line with Apple philosophy. They have very low tolerance for technology that is on its way out. When they stopped making computers with floppy drives, they were still in common use but clearly on the edge of being obsolete. Same situation as with optical drives, which I only use now to make discs for my mother-in-law. Every time they do this, there's consternation from those people who still use the outdated tech, but Apple has always been willing to piss off a vocal minority in order to push tech standards forward.

This was clearly a design choice. Mainly because the absence of it doesn't result in a "broken" phone that needs to be "fixed," but rather just an absent feature, and one that will be a moot issue in a couple of years when the tech catches up with the phone.
Click to expand...

Hahaha.
 
Most Android LTE phones have only two antennas just like the iPhone 5. None have three. The difference is the the iPhone 4S/5 dynamically switch between the two as if it was one. Said Android phones do not do this and treat both antennas as separate ones. The Qualcomm chip may not be able to support a third antenna and that would require Apple to wait for a single chip that does or use two chips.
 
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