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uncle6

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 25, 2016
6
0
NYC
Hi,
I am very interested in the iPhone SE, and planning to buy it at full price. I plan to use T-Mobile as carrier in the United States, and also use it when I travel to Japan and Hong and buy the sim card in those country, and pop into the phone to at least be able to use LTE data, so whether the phone CDMA or GSM does not concern me much as the voice call is not so important (I can get by it by using VOIP app like Skype). I do not want to use roaming when I am abroad.

According to the LTE support page, http://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/, there are 2 models, A1662 and A1723.

After chatting online with Apple support, they told me choosing Sprint as wireless carrier will get me the A1723, and the other options - At&t, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sim Free will get me the A1662.

Since I want to use T-Mobile in the U.S., so my understanding is that only A1662 is supported. But, according to http://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/, supported LTE networks in Japan are not listed for A1662.

My question is, is it really true that A1662 is not supported in Japan? When I compare the LTE bands support of these two model, the only band that are lacking in A1662 are:

7 (2600 MHz)
28 (700 APT MHz)
38 (TD 2600)
39 (TD 1900)
40 (TD 2300)
41 (TD 2500)


Does missing these bands really make a big difference?

I currently have iPhone 5, A1429 and successfully used it in Japan with local SIM card and got the LTE speed, and the bands supported by the A1429 are ALL supported by A1662, so I really confused.

Thanks for reading my long question and hope someone can shed some light on this.
 
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