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iPhone 4 already has CDMA chip?

Applejuiced said:
Stop getting the VZ fanboys all excited and then a huge letdown again :D
They been exposed to it for over 3 years now.
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I wouldn't call them fanboys. The are just people stuck in bad ATT coverage areas that would like an iphone. Some areas are better than others. My house is in a bad ATT area. The microcell is out of the question because 20 feet off my property I would be in a dead zone again. My cell is my only phone.

I never understood why the hatred for the iphone being offered on another carrier. It should be a win/win for everyone. Maybe some leave ATT and lighten the load, maybe some price competition to lower costs. The only thing I can see is lost is the 'exclusiveness' or maybe it's a status symbol for some (not all) and that will be lost. Who knows.
 
Techhie said:
1. No epic cancellation fees
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1) You signed onto the contract, If you decide to cancel your contract, it is rightfully so, that you should have to pay for such an act.

2) Verizon's ETF is higher than AT&T's.

Verizon = $350
AT&T = $325.

Being a bit blinded. Are we?
 
iEdd said:
You mean USA user base, right?
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No, 522 Million CDMA subscribers worldwide.

iEdd said:
Yeah, well that's the thing. I think if CDMA were to happen, it would've been in 2007. For an almost obsolete technology, it wouldn't make sense to make iPhone 4 or 5 CDMA. iPhone 5 as LTE (3.9G) might make sense though, if there's enough network coverage + backwards compatibility.
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Once again somebody who knows nothing about wireless technology.....in fact, is completely ignoring technology trends in general...spouting off something comletely ignorant.

CDMA is no more obsolete than the current GSM technology. As with all technology, both will be retired for the newer LTE technology. Both will be around for many years until LTE is ubiquitous.

iEdd said:
Why not just change the thread title to:

iPhone 3G, 3GS, and iPhone 4 all have WCDMA

or

This just in, iPhone 4 supports 3G standards
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This we agree on.
 
iEdd said:
Yeah, well that's the thing. I think if CDMA were to happen, it would've been in 2007. For an almost obsolete technology, it wouldn't make sense to make iPhone 4 or 5 CDMA. iPhone 5 as LTE (3.9G) might make sense though, if there's enough network coverage + backwards compatibility.
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The ignorance on this board never ceases to amaze me.

CDMA is just as "dead" as GSM is. The next generation standard, LTE, is not backwards compatible with GSM. Both technologies will be active for the next ten or so years, and both GSM and CDMA will be gradually phased out for LTE.

In ten years, your iPhone 4 will be a paperweight.
 
bergmef said:
I wouldn't call them fanboys. The are just people stuck in bad ATT coverage areas that would like an iphone. Some areas are better than others. My house is in a bad ATT area. The microcell is out of the question because 20 feet off my property I would be in a dead zone again. My cell is my only phone.

I never understood why the hatred for the iphone being offered on another carrier. It should be a win/win for everyone. Maybe some leave ATT and lighten the load, maybe some price competition to lower costs. The only thing I can see is lost is the 'exclusiveness' or maybe it's a status symbol for some (not all) and that will be lost. Who knows.
Click to expand...

Maybe in a year or few more down the road.
Hang tight though :D
 
iTouch said:
My friend works at a semiconductor company and he calls it GSM, which is by default GSM/EDGE. WCDMA is a separate PA.

IF it were an all in one solution then I would agree. They are 2 separate components for now and he works at one of the largest semiconductor companies. A good portion of their business are cell phones.
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You're right, in much of the world (engineering and otherwise) people do talk about GSM/TDMA/GPRS and WCDMA/UMTS-3G separately, since they're two different types of radio systems... and therefore phones need two separate radios to support them... even though UMTS in this case is set up to use some of the older GSM core network.

It seems to be mostly an American thing to lump them both under the same "GSM" term. Probably to make it easier to discuss in comparison to American "CDMA" networks where only one radio type is needed to handle all communications, 2G or 3G.

Some countries, such as Korea, have combination EVDO and UMTS networks with no GSM/GPRS. In their case, UMTS is set up to talk to the older CDMA2000 core network, allowing foreign UMTS capable GSM phones to work.

So UMTS is not just used with GSM networks, just as LTE is not just used with GSM networks.
 
kwiens said:
uHey folks,

My apologies on the incorrect information that was on the teardown for a little while. We're in a rush to ID a lot of components, and one of our engineers accidentally added some EVO part numbers to an internal document we were referencing. Then another engineer, not realizing it was incorrect data, posted them to step 16 of the teardown without double-checking it. The information has been corrected.

I know you guys put a lot of trust in us on these things, and we do our best. Thank you for your understanding. This is a collaborative, in-the-moment effort. Your comments are extremely useful, and we incorporate error checking from all of you as we do our analysis. Please don't leave comments on the teardown or ping us on twitter if you see any more errors.
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LMAO... hahaha... :p :D :cool:

For a half day, Verizon users were beaming with excitement only to be snuffed out like the candles on a birthday cake.
 
Geckotek said:
No, 522 Million CDMA subscribers worldwide.
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How many GSM subscribers worldwide? Post your sources for both figures.

thetexan said:
CDMA is just as "dead" as GSM is. The next generation standard, LTE, is not backwards compatible with GSM. Both technologies will be active for the next ten or so years, and both GSM and CDMA will be gradually phased out for LTE.
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Wikipedia LTE Article said:
Co-existence with legacy standards (users can transparently start a call or transfer of data in an area using an LTE standard, and, should coverage be unavailable, continue the operation without any action on their part using GSM/GPRS or W-CDMA-based UMTS or even 3GPP2 networks such as cdmaOne or CDMA2000)
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Once again, there's only a couple of places where CDMA is considered not dead. One of them is USA. There's no need to take it as a personal attack that you need to defend yourself against.
 
iEdd said:
How many GSM subscribers worldwide? Post your sources for both figures.
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A lot more. You can look it up. No need for me to post it here as it's irrelevant. It's in the low billions. I think 5x larger than CDMA subscribers. But like I said, that's irrelevant. The point that was made is that there are CDMA subscribers outside the US. A very large number are in Asia.

But if you feel the need to doubt me on the CDMA figure, you can find the info you need here.

http://www.cdg.org/worldwide/cdma_world_subscriber.asp
 
Well the main thing is you acknowledged that. You were saying that a CDMA iphone would Double worldwide userbase. Unless the ratio of CDMA:GSM subscribers were 1:1, that's not a reasonable expectation.

But I agree, a lot of this is irrelevant. Would you agree that there will not be a current generation CDMA iPhone? If for no other reason than Jobs seeing GSM as the choice and sticking to it?
 
iEdd said:
Well the main thing is you acknowledged that. You were saying that a CDMA iphone would Double worldwide userbase. Unless the ratio of CDMA:GSM subscribers were 1:1, that's not a reasonable expectation.

But I agree, a lot of this is irrelevant. Would you agree that there will not be a current generation CDMA iPhone? If for no other reason than Jobs seeing GSM as the choice and sticking to it?
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I NEVER made that statement. I think you are confusing me w/ another poster.

I agree that a current generation CDMA iPhone is improbable, but not entirely impossible. I'm not holding my breath and plan on joining Justin in line tonight or in the morning.

And seeing as how Jobs approached Verizon first, I don't agree with your reasoning. There's absolutely nothing wrong w/ CDMA. And up until the GSMA switched to W-CDMA/UMTS, the inferior air interface GSM used (TDMA) made CDMA a better option for voice quality. Also, CDMA had the faster data until then as well.

There are 2 reasons why it most likely isn't happening:

1) Exclusivity agreement
2) Corporate culture clash
 
iEdd said:
It appears like you did. I disputed that it would double the user base worldwide, and said maybe it would double the US userbase, then you said no.
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Ok....that's not what I meant. Seems I spoke out of turn. (Didn't fully consider the context of your statement)

Once again, I guess I need to retract and clarify.

I was just pointing out that there is a larger market for CDMA than the US. (So many people think that CDMA is US only) But I didn't mean to imply it would double.
 
Geckotek said:
Hmmmm....so your original statement was just to point out that there are chips being designed that combine the 2G and 3G PAs into one chip? That was unclear to me. Sorry for rolling you up into my list of corrections.
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Yes they are already designed but being tested currently. But with production things can happen and money wise it's more per unit.
 
iEdd said:
How many GSM subscribers worldwide? Post your sources for both figures.
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Raw GSM subscriber count is meaningless since not all have access to the iPhone and many cannot afford a smartphone, much less a monthly data plan.

Checking the actual sales figures turns up rather surprising results.

In the US, about 12% of ATT GSM subscribers got one. Other countries follow with the numbers dropping into single digits and below. (Japan has recently jumped in percentage due to giving them away with a contract.)

In fact, once we go outside of a half dozen Westernized countries, iPhone sales drop to tiny percentages.

For example, India has 110 million GSM users with a carrier selling the iPhone. Only 50,000 people (0.04%) bought one last year, because it's 1/3 the price of a car. We find similar low sales percentages in China, Russia, and so forth.

CDMA subscribers in North America alone constitute a far richer potential sales market than most of the rest of the world does with billions of cheap GSM handset subscribers.

A problem for Apple is that they crippled themselves by locking to AT&T for so long. Google is now activating over a million new Android devices a week, and the choice in such devices is getting richer every day. Windows Phone 7 is also due before Christmas, and reporters seem to like the prototypes they're playing with now.
 
This topic make sense now.
Verizon will launch CDMA iPhone 4.
Theres too much to learn in our iPhone4.
 
It's hilarious to go back and read these topics now.

I can't wait for the first tear-down to see what chips are inside.
 
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