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No Apple-Suitable 4G LTE Chips Until Early 2012?

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Apr 12, 2001
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With rumors of Apple planning for a later-than-usual iPhone release this year, some have hoped that Apple might use the extra time to build in support for the latest 4G LTE networks beginning to go live with many carriers. On Apple's earnings conference call earlier this week, Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook reiterated earlier comments that the current generation of LTE chips forced design compromises that the company has been unwilling to make.

But as noted by Forbes after the call, that situation won't be resolved in time for Apple to bring LTE to the fifth-generation iPhone, pushing the compatibility off until the sixth-generation model in 2012. In particular, the chips Apple needs for an LTE-compatible iPhone simply aren't in production yet.
Those chips won't appear in handsets until next year, says Will Strauss, president of wireless chip tracker Forward Concepts. "They're right that there’s nothing out there that fits the bill, and likely nothing will until the fourth quarter of this year," Strauss says when asked about Cook's remarks.
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The report notes that Verizon's current 4G handset offering, the HTC Thunderbolt, relies on two chips for connectivity, a Samsung one for 4G and a Qualcomm one for 3G. Hybrid chips offering both 4G and fallback 3G compatibility won't become available until late this year and thus won't make it into handsets until early 2012.

The Cell Phone Junkie reports (via TiPb) that Apple is likely to use Qualcomm's recently-announced MDM9615 wireless chip to provide that hybrid functionality. Qualcomm notes that it will begin shipping samples of the chip in "late 2011".

Article Link: No Apple-Suitable 4G LTE Chips Until Early 2012?
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/04/22/no-apple-suitable-4g-lte-chips-until-early-2012/
<insert buy an android comment here>


Disappointing.

Your 4G on your evo cant hold LTEs underpants :p I have the thunderbolt and while it has its flaws, LTE isnt one of them. Battery would fit the bill for a problem though, however, I got the extended battery. While bulky, worth it.
 
So what is Apple waiting for with the iPhone 5?
If there are no chips until 2012, then just give us the iphone 5 now :)
 
Exactly what I've been expecting. Will be nearing the end of my contract by the time the first LTE iPhone is released.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

It's WiMax.. iPhone is going to be LTE. Apple is obsessed with thin design. Using two separate chip for 3G and 4G will make things too tight. I'm guessing they want the hybrid chip..
 
I wouldn't want an LTE phone that had compromises anyway. It'd be hard to believe that anyone else would either
 
aiqw9182 said:
As expected.
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Yep. As an added bonus, LTE networks might actually be available in more than select locations sometime around launch. They're not missing much this year.


budfoot said:
Not sure I understand, I've had 4G on my Evo for over a year now...

Hrm....
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The "4G" on your Evo is WiMax, a completely different standard being pushed by Clearwire and supported by Sprint. It allowed Sprint to get a "4G" network up and running fairly quickly, but it's likely to be dead-ended with the proliferation of LTE and/or Clearwire blowing through its venture capital. Sprint's CEO has already said they'd be open to switching over to LTE in the future, which they really should do or end up being left behind in a similar way to their CDMA situation (except without Verizon to back them up).
 
budfoot said:
Not sure I understand, I've had 4G on my Evo for over a year now...

Hrm....
Click to expand...

wimax is not 4G. it even shows up with the wifi icon when it's connected. LTE is a real ITU standard that will eventually pave the way for real 4G
 
This does not necessarily mean that Apple's iPhone 5 will not have the hybrid chip. It is entirely possible that Apple could be working very close with Qualcomm and they could announce the Iphone 5 in late September just not ship it until November 2011 or even close to the end of the year.
 
wordoflife said:
So what is Apple waiting for with the iPhone 5?
If there are no chips until 2012, then just give us the iphone 5 now :)
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The obvious answer is that iOS 5 is going to be major and is why it is taking awhile (probably iTunes cloud related).
 
That's completely fine with me. LTE speeds aren't really LTE speeds anyway. Even Verizon which does have the fastest LTE falls short of at least 50% of the actual LTE speeds. It's all false advertising anyway :)
 
I still haven't seen the "killer app" that makes this higher mobile speed something I can't wait another year for. I know that's not the smartest way of looking at it - the higher speeds bring the innovations we haven't imagined yet. But I'm not seeing them on the Android platform, either.

It seems to mostly benefit tethering - but tethering benefits other devices and not the mobile handled experience.

Fast access to these new cloud music storage services is interesting, but the data caps practically kill their usefulness.
 
ArchaicRevival said:
That's completely fine with me. LTE speeds aren't really LTE speeds anyway. Even Verizon which does have the fastest LTE falls short of at least 50% of the actual LTE speeds. It's all false advertising anyway :)
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Agree and besides not worth having something that will only work in a few select cities anyways and I actually have always had good 3g speed with AT&T wether I was in So Cal, Nor Cal or on the road.
 
ArchaicRevival said:
That's completely fine with me. LTE speeds aren't really LTE speeds anyway. Even Verizon which does have the fastest LTE falls short of at least 50% of the actual LTE speeds. It's all false advertising anyway :)
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I dont know of any wireless phone that could support real 4G speeds. Besides on a mobile device, do I really need more than 20mb down, 5 up? Thats already faster than my cable modem lol.
 
I really want to see an LTE iPhone in 2012. I recently bought a Droid X on a 1 year contract because I wanted a phone with a large screen (and the iPhone 4 has a pretty small screen for today's phones). When my 1 year contract is up, I will look at all the smartphone offerings available at that time and make a decision on what to get next. I want Apple to make the short list but if there is no LTE iPhone, I will find it really hard to want to lock myself into 2 years with last generation technology.
 
Kind of torn on 4G. I can see AT&T and Verizon making an upgrade to capped 4G data plans mandatory once these radios are added, even if you are happy with 3G. Personally, I'd rather have unlimited 3G data than capped 4G data any day of the week.
 
bbplayer5 said:
I dont know of any wireless phone that could support real 4G speeds. Besides on a mobile device, do I really need more than 20mb down, 5 up? Thats already faster than my cable modem lol.
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That is also true. What is it that you're doing on your phone that is requiring all these speeds? I'd rather have all the companies come together to make an LTE type of internet WIRELESS network, which will bring the cost down on both them and the consumers, and we'll have these speeds all over the nation for both phones and any wifi enabled devices. But that's probably wishful thinking lol :)
 
Give us a 4.3" screen so the phone would have to be somewhat bigger - big enough to support two chips for 3G and 4G.

Tony
 
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