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"T-Mobile says Band 71 adds increased building penetration and covers greater distances."

Hmmmmmm...anyone qualified to weigh in on the health implications of this? Nikola Tesla, perhaps?

He'd be all for it. Tesla didn't want to use power lines, he wanted to beam power from tower-to-tower using electromagnetic radiation @ 300 MHz.
 
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Can someone explain why Apple still bothers to manufacture A1905/A1897 that are identical to the other two phones, but without CDMA support? Why not just make one phone, then use carrier locking? Are the GSM-only phones that much cheaper to make?

The iPhone 6S had CDMA radios in the GSM(AT&T) version. I ordered it at first but when I went to pick it up, I checked Verizon's whitelist and the IMEI wasn't in there. Since I knew that meant it couldn't provision a new VZW SIM card, I didn't take the phone, and got a VZW version instead.

Edit: Yep I remembered correctly:

From Apple.com:

Model A1633* 6S
Model A1634* 6S+


LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30)

TD-LTE (Bands 38, 39, 40, 41)

TD-SCDMA 1900 (F), 2000 (A)

CDMA EV-DO Rev. A (800, 1700/2100, 1900, 2100 MHz)

UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1700/2100, 1900, 2100 MHz)

GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)


Model A1688* 6S
Model A1687* 6S+


LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29)

TD-LTE (Bands 38, 39, 40, 41)

TD-SCDMA 1900 (F), 2000 (A)

CDMA EV-DO Rev. A (800, 1700/2100, 1900, 2100 MHz)

UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1700/2100, 1900, 2100 MHz)

GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
 
If I had ordered a new phone, this would be cause for me to immediately cancel the order.

This is very short-sighted by Apple. I understand that TMo didn't win the spectrum until earlier this year but the fact was that SOMEONE was going to win the auctions and it was going to be rolled out. It should have been built in.

I suspect we're going to get a slight revision to the 8/8+/X early next year that adds that band.
This sort of thing has never happened with iPhones, why would Apple make a revised version of their newest phones for one carrier's band?? There's literally no chance of this happening, sorry.....
 
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People where crying that iPhone 6 did not have Band 12. Fast forward 3 years and I do not believe Band 12 has been deployed everywhere in Chicago and suburbs. It wasn't until like 3 months ago when Chicago saw the first Band 12 deployment, so it will take T-mobile few more years to finish that first. If this is the rate T-mobile brings the new technology to Chicago and surrounding areas, I have at least 2-3 years before I need to worry about lack of band 71 in iPhones 12 or 13
 
That's great... save me from upgrading. IMO, I dont find the 8 or the X appealing feature-wise. Either I'm getting old or iPhone are behind on their features vs other competitors. face detecting emojis are cool on demos, but I probably wont use it often in real life. This feels like the MBP's touchbar all over again.
 
They're cheap (because they want marketshare), and they have better coverage than Sprint. I don't use them, but I know people who are quite happy T-Mobile - and they aren't in the market for new watches or phones, so the things you're outraged about have no meaning to them.

Another thing about T-Mobile, better customer support. I can ask them questions any time online. With Verizon, you need your account #, sign in ID, first born, blah blah blah. Also, cell phone company complainers are like Aholes. Everyone has one. Everybody has poor coverage somewhere.
 
Why would they introduce new technology to replace Touch ID and then reintroduce it. They say it's more secure, and it's the future. I'm not liking the idea of Face ID at the moment either but I know it's the future, and next years model/s will have improved the feature for sure.

But no one is really buying that it's the future. They've already read enough to know it's a COMPROMISE and engineering failure of Touch ID under the glass. There will always be situations, like in the car, where Face ID is simply not good. Nothing is going to change with that until no one is driving their own cars!
 
Yep, thats why T-mobile is doing that free upgrade to the next iPhone which will be 600 mhz compatible with 12 months worth of payments on their EIP program of the 8 or X.

That plan is a ripoff if you're getting the X. For the 256GB, it'll cost you $790 to basically borrow the phone for a year.
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I dropped in in this thread to confirm that there are people who actually think this is somehow Apple's fault, and I wasn't disappointed.

Well, the question is whether they held back the band so people will have to upgrade next year or not, who knows. However, for band 12, they definitely held that back since so many other manufacturers had it.
 
If I had ordered a new phone, this would be cause for me to immediately cancel the order.

This is very short-sighted by Apple. I understand that TMo didn't win the spectrum until earlier this year but the fact was that SOMEONE was going to win the auctions and it was going to be rolled out. It should have been built in.

I suspect we're going to get a slight revision to the 8/8+/X early next year that adds that band.

Dont quit your day job to go into the 'suspecting' business.
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It isn't coming back.
Just like Force Touch was going to take over all of iOS? Hint: a grand total of zero iPads have it.
 
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Don't be upset about this everyone. The key to a better network is NOT faster bands or "5G"...

We need MORE cell towers with BETTER antennas in those towers.

This isn't true. This is a lower-frequency wave that transmits farther, but with less bandwidth (the way AM reception is generally better than FM reception). So this will improve the network even without MORE cell towers or BETTER antennas.

And don't most areas have 4G? On a by-population basis, it has to somewhere around 95% or more, right?
 
If I had ordered a new phone, this would be cause for me to immediately cancel the order.

This is very short-sighted by Apple. I understand that TMo didn't win the spectrum until earlier this year but the fact was that SOMEONE was going to win the auctions and it was going to be rolled out. It should have been built in.

I suspect we're going to get a slight revision to the 8/8+/X early next year that adds that band.

Well good, thats one less person in the way of getting one on launch day. Stop being so obtuse and short sited. First off, Apple doesn't design their baseband modems. They are made by either Intel or Qualcomm. Second, the iPhone 8/X were designed, engineered, and nailed down many many months ago. If TMO was serious about this, they would have been working with Apple, but the odds are, its an issue of the baseband chip and antenna... these are serious design issues. There is a reason there is like 1 ***** phone that supports this new TMO deal. Give it another year and 'maybe' everyone will have updated their modem and antennas for it. But don't get stupid about Apple not supporting something they have very little control over... and that almost nobody else supports either. The Samsung Galaxy S8 and just released Note 8 don't support it either... and I'll go out on a limb to say the upcoming Google Pixel phones don't as well.
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Dont quit your day job to go into the 'suspecting' business.
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Just like Force Touch was going to take over all of iOS? Hint: a grand total of zero iPads have it.

Ill admit no force touch on my iPad pro is painful... but at the same time iOS 11 has a TON of features on the iPad that aren't available on the iPhone either. Its just something we have to deal with. I am curious to see what the future holds though.... I mean it cant be too long before iPads get force touch and faceID... I think the engineering challenges for force touch on a large screen could be problematic, but faceID is probably a guarantee at some point.
 
After the shipping delays, are we saying that it hasn't been delayed enough like the LG V30 has to support this band? If we waited until December, would this be in?

This looks like the perfect reason to wait another couple of years before upgrading if someone were looking for one.
 
Corect me if I am wrong, but I don't think apple builds the modems. I don't think anyone supports it yet.

The latest Qualcomm modems support the frequency but I'm trying to find out what Intel XMM 7560 supports but all they have on their website is the fact that it supports 35 LTE bands but don't give the frequencies supported. What ever the case maybe it'll be interesting to see whether the number of customers jump once 600MHz deployment hits critical mass thus giving them a coverage either equal or better than the big players such as AT&T and Verizon.
 
It's a game of tradeoffs. You get extra coverage with lower frequency, but it comes at the cost of peak speed. The same thing happened with Band 12 versus Band 4.
Thats not true at all. Band 12 is slower because they have such a small chunk of it. The lower the frequency the better the penetration is. Thats all that the lower frequency affects. Speed depends on how much spectrum they actually have of that band.
 
But no one is really buying that it's the future. They've already read enough to know it's a COMPROMISE and engineering failure of Touch ID under the glass. There will always be situations, like in the car, where Face ID is simply not good. Nothing is going to change with that until no one is driving their own cars!
This just isn't true.

They've said and others have confirmed that it was said before this was a publicly known thing that they never seriously tried to put Touch ID under glass. Period. The goal from the start on that particular phone was a secure face based unlocking mechanism that couldn't be fooled. Like it or not, that's how it has been. They may try something else later, but it isn't because of any failure to get something to work. Those were rumors that have been addressed both on the record and off the record.
 
We have to remember LTE Band 71 (600 MHz range) is so new that NOBODY outside of T-Mobile USA is using it! It's not yet available in western Europe, Japan and South Korea--places with supposedly more advanced cellphone installations. As such, the first phone to use it will be the LG V30--and afterwards the successors to the Samsung Galaxy S8, LG G6 and HTC U11, plus various Lenovo/Motorola 2018 models. Now, there is a tiny possibility the iPhone 8 models and the iPhone X could get a model with an updated cellular radio chip to support LTE Band 71 by spring 2018--after all, the new models already support LTE Band 12, which operates in the 700 MHz range.
 
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