Verizon-compatible CDMA iPhone 4 rumored to be in production - Page 2

Verizon has a solid voice service, the call stability is great as well as the data... Though in my area and everywhere I happen to go AT&T is great too.

Currently Verizon users can't browse the web over 3g or 2g and talk on the phone at the same time. Not a day goes by that I don't do both of those things at the same time.

It is a problem that will always prevent me from going to a CDMA carrier until somehow it can be overcome.

THAT doesn't matter actually lol. You're talking about a win that we won't see the results of for YEARS. A CMDA iPhone for Verizon would have a long enough life that by the time CMDA is gone, nobody will be pouting over their CMDA iPhone not working anymore.

People act as if Verizon or Sprint aren't facing the very issue we're discussing here. What will all of their users do with their phones as CMDA is phased out?

Companies like Sprint and Verizon will transition by starting to sell phones that work on both the old network and new network, then eventually they'll sell phones that only work with the new network. Apple could easily work with these companies to bring the iPhone to their network.

It's not a matter of CMDA being a "dead technology." It never was.

SERIOUSLY tempted NOT to pick up my iphone4 on the 24th and wait for a month. If AT&T were unable to anticipate demand when people were ordering, and their network in NY is by their own admission "lacking', then what will it become? Is it smarter for all those people who have pre-ordered and not paid/collected their phones to hold off and see how the network copes and maybe jump on Verizon's phone in November? Also... it AT&T sucks badly- will Apple move up the Verizon deal? Am curious to hear what others think

Mmmm....

First: A rumored, or inferred action often has more leverage/value than the actual action itself!

Second: The only way I see this happening is that Apple offers a model with both GSM and CDMA.

Those, needing the capability for CDMA or both, would buy the new model.

In a way it would be augmentation instead of fragmentation. The network interoperability of the iPhone would be augmented, but the current core function of the device would be preserved-- all apps, iTunes, etc. would support all iPhones.

.

att*= GSM
verizon = CDMA

CDMA !=GSM therefore you need phones with different radios.

in the UK you probably do something smart like use a common technology.

A Verizon iPhone would be the greatest thing since sliced bread!

I would hazard a guess that those suicides have nothing to do with The Transformers getting the contract.

The standard is called GSM, Verizon bet on the wrong horse.

I'll say it again, they are wrong, this product which is in production which will be intro next month with VZ is a competitors product it is not an iphone, these idiot are just spreading miss information yet again. Also any rumor about an VZ ipad is also a competitor product and just VZ attempt to compete against the iphone and ipad

No. The only thing will happen is Verizon will "also" get the iPhone. GSM is the global standard.

The clue is in the name: Global System for Mobile Communications.

You're wrong. You only have to look as far as the AT&T CEO to see the Verizon iPhone is coming in September. When asked about it on one of those "money" TV things he didn't even deny it. He only said that the vast majority of our customers are on a family plan, and a lot of the rest are enterprise customers and are very sticky customers. He doesn't want to deny it 'cause he trying to manage expectations around the stock. If it wasn't true he's say so. You'd have to see the video and I'm far too lazy to locate it.

This is not exactly breaking news, and I think people will be disappointed. There were already news reports a month or so ago about CDMA iPhones being made, but they are not destined for the US or Verizon. They are destined for other countries using CDMA networks like in Japan. In fact I believe one specific company in Japan is supposed to be getting something like 5 million CDMA iphones over time. Everyone likes a good rumor, but lets fact the facts. Apple and AT&T are in a contract, and Verizon is no longer interested in the iPhone even if people are still interested in one.

I'm thinking the same thing. Why would ATT allow such a gracious upgrade policy?!? They're running scared. Companies don't offer that kind of deal unless they had alot to gain or alot to lose.

Actually - they'll do what AT&T (Cingular) customers did in 2004 or 05 when Cingular moved from TDMA to GSM. Your old phone worked for a while on the old network, but when you upgraded to a new one it was the new technology. At some point they discontinued the TDMA service and the last few phones were orphaned - but they gave you a basic free GSM phone instead.

http://pocketnow.com/news-archive/cd...ge-coming-soon

The upgrade is available this year, the question is whether or not Sprint and Verizon are upgrading their systems to match it or ignoring it in favor of working on their 4G rollouts. Doing both would be best of course.

Also CDMA does have one advantage over GSM, it hasn't been hacked yet. GSM was hacked for the first time a month or 2 ago. The protection level is higher in CDMA. May not be a major issue, but it's still something to consider

Not necessarily.

The thing is that in the UK, all those companies use GSM not CDMA. And all on the same bandwidth range. So as of the iphone 4 (if not before) the phones will be made with no software lock so that all you need is the SIM.

In the US it's a little different because there are only 2 GSM carriers and they use different bandwidth. So it would take actually tweaking or adding hardware to make the phone truly work on both. At least as they currently stand. Same with Verizon. They would have to have two antenna sets in the phone to handle both or make two different sets of phones.

However what all these rumors forget is that there were court documents showing a contract with ATT until 2012 for the iphone. Not the iphone on GSM but all of it. And no one has dispelled these documents as fakes, adjustable or adjusted. Until one of them does so, I'm in the camp of expecting nada until then

The boy keeps crying wolf, and the sheep want to see the wolf so bad they keep running to look everytime.

Apple said in court that they had a 5 year agreement with AT&T, that would take them until July 2012. There is no public info that suggests the contract has been invalidated or modified. They needed AT&T as a partner to change the mobile phone paradigm and to introduce visual voicemail. Once they had AT&T they were able to get other carriers on board with shorter terms, but AT&T took a huge gamble on Apple, and Apple had to give them the extended exclusivity in order to get them to do so. Deal with it, we ALL benefited, even if you are a Verizon customer with a Droid, to a large extent you owe a thanks to the Apple and AT&T deal for making it possible.

Verizon is doing just fine for now without the iPhone, and they have plenty of infrastructure issues to fix before they could handle a huge rush of iPhone users. They are probably plenty happy to sell Android phones and Blackberry devices until they get their LTE rollout across most of the US. Download speeds on their current 3G network are now significantly slower than the other 3 major vendors, and LTE chips are not available for handsets yet, so Verizon is probably happy to wait another year or more for the LTE iphone. It may or may not still need a CDMA fallback, but it will still give "switchers" a much better first impression if their new Verizon iPhone is faster rather than half the speed.

These rumors are great for stock traders, people in the media, and Verizon, so don't expect them to ever stop. Every idiot who believes this and who does not renew with AT&T or who decides not to leave Verizon is a big win for the Verizon rumor mill. Go ahead and keep living your life in limbo waiting for vaporware. You are being used.

Just another bogus news to try to limit defections from Verizon in favor of At&t...iPhone 4 is a big hit!!

Even as LTE and WiMax roll out, both Sprint and Verizon will rely on CDMA for a long while to come for broad voice coverage. They will continue selling all their phones with a CDMA radio for at least another 5 years. Wimax and LTE will be mostly used for data the first two years and not for voice calls. So if Apple ever decides to offer an iPhone on CDMA carriers here in the USA or abroad, they will have no choice but to include CDMA capability.

I am not saying that they will release a CDMA version of the iPhone, simply stating that if they do go with a CDMA carrier, they will need to include that radio for several more iterations of the iPhone.

Yes GSM is far larger than CDMA, but at around 550 million users around the world, CDMA is big enough to justify the small amount of money for Apple to make one. If HTC, Blackberry, and many other makers can make a CDMA and GSM model of their phones, so could Apple.

The US is also Apple's home market so it is vital that they curtail Android's growth here. The only way to do that is by offering it to more carriers. Many speculate that Verizon is still being stubborn about their demands. One way to really stick it to Verizon and get them to submit would be to offer the iPhone to Sprint and T-Mobile which combined are about as large as Verizon.

I am with Sprint and couldn't be happier. Excellent coverage and unbelievably cheap rates. With my 25% corporate discount, I pay only $52 a month for the $69 anymobile anytime unlimited data & text plan. It only includes 450 anytime minutes to landline phones before 7PM but I never come close to 450 because 90% of my calls are to cell phones. The AT&T plans are quite different, but the cheapest iPhone plan that comes close would cost me well over $100 a month for far inferior coverage. I know because I used to be with AT&T before Sprint. So I am not going anywhere. Even if Sprint charged a surcharge of $10 a month for the iPhone like they did for the new Evo, I could still have an iPhone for $62 a month for nearly unlimited everything. An iPhone on Sprint could also really turn things around for Sprint and start to bring back the customers.

Bell and Telus together shared the cost to create a 3G GSM network in Canada - presumably a large objective of that was to be able to sell iPhones. iPhones sold by bell in canada are not CDMA.

The network will stay up for another 5-6 years, but I highly doubt all their phones will still have CDMA chips for that long. Take a look at AT&T and Canada for examples of carriers making a tech switch. VoLTE will be ready by 2012 if not 2011, and Verizon will be agressive in their coverage rollout for a number of reasons, so I would expect they will have phones without CDMA in 2012 or 2013.

I believe they exist, but are not (or were not) yet economical. I see no reason they can't have a CDMA iPhone, though.

Contrary to popular belief, CDMA can support (or soon will support) simultaneous voice and data. http://www.cdg.org/news/press/2009/Aug17_09.asp

LTE will replace EVDO not CDMA. Verizon said CDMA will be around until around 2018.

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=176454&

"BOSTON -- Verizon Wireless CTO Tony Melone says that it is in his company's best interest to move to nationwide LTE as soon as possible and cut the pricing of mobile data services along the way, but that the operator is unlikely to stop CDMA-based voice services before 2018 at the earliest."

Apparently you didn't read the questions I answered.


It's pretty easy for someone else to characterize the necessary effort as "easy." Dual standard CDMA/GSM phones have been around for years (at a price...). Verizon will certainly have to offer CDMA/LTE handsets during their transition period, and for quite some time after that. It'll likely be years before their entire network makes the transition. As for Sprint, I'd say the jury is still very much out on what they've chosen to do.

The real question is whether Apple will choose to buy into the fading days of CDMA. Maybe, but it certainly hasn't been their style to adopt waning technology.


I'd call it zombie technology—the walking dead.

To be more clear, CDMA (2G) is used for voice. Compared to GSM (2G) the voice algorithm is pretty universally better than GSM. It also has come other advantages, too. CDMA2000/EV-DO Rev. A(3G) is for data and wasn't designed to do simultaneous voice and data. EV-DO Rev. B is.

Even when connected to CDMA2000 calls are still made and received via CDMA, this is apparently more efficient than GSM-based users being on UMTS (3G) and making and receiving calls on 3G, which is more power insensitive. The only phones that tend to beat the iPhone in battery duration are CDMA phones and only when stating 3G calls.

Verizon has reportedly working on simultaneous V&D over Rev. A without actually upgrading to Rev B. I have no idea how they'd accomplish this but I think they need this in short order.

FaceTime appears to use protocols that put V&D all on WiFi.



Eveything I've ever read on the subject states simulations V&D in Rev. A is not possible.



I have no idea how this get pushed around. Creating a CDMA phone for China makes no sense. Verizon and Sprint both have many more potential customers for a CDMA iPhone than China. China's CDMA carrier is the 3rd largest in the country and only has 65M subs. If they are going to add an alternative option to China that is focused on China first then it would China Mobile with 500M subs on TD-SCDMA. Now, if they focus on the US first then including other CDMA networks throughout the world isn't an issue, but China wouldn't their first consideration for CDMA phone.



That is one theory. Another is that they lose nothing with this early upgrade because they raised the ETF fee to $325 so they do gain you for another 2 years and risk losing little. I'm quite torn as I think both might be in play, and even if their contract is up I don't think they know Apple's plans.

This technology isn't widely used which tells me it has inherent flaws. It's costly on many levels. Not just the chip, but Qualcomm's egregious licensing. Perhaps most important to Apple is the cost of size, power usage and radios. These chips seems to only be found in a couple large devices with pretty bad ratings compared to their simple brethren.

Plus, they seem very limited in other ways. Sure, they have GSM and CDMA in the same device, but there was at least BB for Verzion that didn't have GSM frequencies for N. America. I know I've seen other odd configurations but I can't recall specifics.

Unless this CDMA/GSM chip can be as small, as power efficient and support all the need frequencies as the X-GOLD 616 and Triquint chips (speculation) Apple is using the iPhone 4, I can't imagine it being considered.


I prefer the term obsolescing.

You think AT&T is scared
Hahahahahahaha Come on now.

First of all, Sprint and Verizon customers can use the internet and talk while on WiFi now. I have wifi in my home but have never once felt the need to use the internet or data while talking on the phone. Is that really a feature that current iPhone users really use? I really don't see that as a major selling point.

I also don't care if I couldn't use my CDMA iPhone in another country. There are many alternatives, for example Google Voice with a cheap prepaid GSM phone, Spype or other VOiP services, email, etc..

I don't think Apple would have to make a hybrid GSM/CDMA phone. They could simply make a CDMA model and clearly explain that you cannot surf and talk at the same time. All verizon and Sprint customers are already aware of this fact so no surprise there. There are about 165 million CDMA customers in the USA. That is a huge number. How many European countries would you have to group together to get 165 million phone subscribers? (not total population of the countries, just the phone subscribers)

CDMA will still be around for about 8 more years, even though EVDO will be phased out far more quickly. Apple will have no choice but to offer a CDMA radio if they wish to go with Sprint or Verizon. It remains to be seen if this will be a hybrid phone with GSM/CDMA or simply a CDMA version. But to think that they could not make a ton of money off of 165M potential customers seems silly. How much would R&D really cost to make a CDMA iPhone? I have no idea but I do know that they would probably recoup that cost on the very first day a Verizon or Sprint iPhone is released.

i am not sure this will actually be a good thing for verizon, and here are my reasons:

1) they currently can market the strength of their network due to significantly less data demand than if they have a mass consumer purchase of iphones. the iphone on verizon would make Verizon and AT&T network providers relatively similar with geographyy and tower placement being the prime differentiation. In Orlando, Washington, D.C., Boston, San Diego, and L.A., from my experience, my AT&T iPhone service has always been better than my company provided Verzion Balckberry serivce.

2) Verizon also differentiate themselves from AT&T by marketing that their new phones are better than the iphone and smartphone makers probably offer them great deals since they know they are at a disadvantage selling on AT&T against the iphone

3) Verizon probably would like to finish all their network upgrades before the system is overloaded

...but then again ignoring those issues don't seem to be hurting AT&T

4) not sure verizon is ready to give apple the concesions they demanded when they were initially negotiating the 1st gen iphone release. I think apple has even more leverage at the table now.

Finally, I am not sure apple wants to become the dominant phone on the two dominant networks with the monopolistic practices investigations going on right now. might be better for apple to start by adding Deutsche Telekoms T-Mobile network first and see how that sells.

All these CDMA iPhone rumors are like beating a dead horse by now. I was a previous Verizon customer before I bought my iPhone and would love for Verizon to have the iPhone, but it just isn't going to happen while CDMA is in effect. Once Verizon switches to LTE, then the chances are good. Truth is, Apple is not going to re-tool and produce a CDMA iPhone. Not when CDMA is on the way out. And sure, Apple produces a specific model for the Chinese market (which I believe is some variant of CDMA, but not the same as Verizon), that market is much larger than the US, and much more so than what Apple could expect to gain from Verizon's ~90M subscribers (not all of whom would buy an iPhone, mind you). So the cost is justified. For Apple it simply wouldn't be worth the money, time, and effort to produce a CDMA iPhone for Verizon.

My $.02

I'm going to preorder today and beat the rush.

Sorry , but I think you are very much in the minority there, or at least more so than you think. I'm on the internet almost 90% of the time I'm on my phone (be it mobile, or at home), about the only time I'm not is when I'm driving.


Again minority, or your just not out of the country much. I find it very important to have my device with my information and data with me wherever I go. To have to get another device, that I may not be familiar with is a real PITA, and kind of goes against the whole reason to carry a smart phone (to not have to carry multiple devices) to begin with.

If neither of these things are very important to you I'd re-access if you actually want an iPhone since you could probably just get by with an iPod touch.

How would the CEO of the AT&T know what VZ is doing with any number of supplier of cell phones, he does not so he can not confirm nor deny anything, plus CEO are not allow to make statements about things which are not publicly announce to everyone at the same time and as you pointed out because of stock pricing.

I also point to the fact that for 6 months leading up to VZ announcement of the Motorola Driod phone there were rumors rapid that the iphone was coming to VZ and they were testing it and the such. Well as we all now know, it was not true and the testing that was going on was for the Driod not the iphone. What makes you thinks this is any different.

Fundamentally Apple and VZ are non-compatible companies, unless VZ changes its business model Apple will not do business with them and we all know Steve will not change.

Best Buy is probably taking pre-orders on Verizon iPhones.

Best post.

Unlikely to shutdown the CDMA voice network before 2018 is completely different than "all phones will still have a CDMA chip for at least another 5 years". You also quoted an artical from 2009, before there was any solid agreement on a global VoLTE standard. If Verizon can meet their rollout goals for the lTE network, and if the handsets show up as planned in 12 months, within 24-36 months you will start to see them selling non-CDMA devices. In fact, in about 5 years, if not sooner, I would expect them to cutoff sales of CDMA phones so they can be ready for a 2018 shutdown.

So 90% of the time you are talking on the phone you are also using the internet? I would hate to have a phone conversation with you. Not only would you be distracted but speaker calls are harder to hear in general. I use the data a lot on my phone, but really don't see the need WHILE i am talking to someone. I have that capability with WiFi and never use it. I doubt I am in the minority here.


I have traveled to over 80 countries around the world and take about 2 to 3 foreign trips abroad each year. The VAST majority of Americans never leave the country at all, and the most popular destinations are Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean for the ones that do. So again, Americans who travel abroad are hardly a majority. And even when I was on AT&T, the cost of using an iPhone overseas is ridiculously expensive with AT&T. Many horror stories about people using their iPhones and then getting bills for thousands of dollars when they get home. My HTC Touch Pro 2 on Sprint has GSM functionality, so all I have to do is buy a pre-paid SIM card overseas and I can use it fine. And as long as I can get WiFi abroad I can also use my phone normally because I have it set up with Google Voice as my main number. Thanks to Gizmo and Google Voice I can talk for free overseas on WiFi.

You're missing an obvious use and point here. If you are on a call and you need to look something up per your conversation are you going to grab pen and paper, write down, disco the call, then look it up, then write that down, and finally call them back with the info. I'm not. I do it all while on the call in a very efficient manner.

I am never on speaker because I am using headphones. This makes the handset a handset and not some device I'm holding directly in front of me 12 inches from my mouth. There is absolutely no way I'd give up simultaneous voice and data. Even if the price of the plan was cut in half the usefulness of this feature is non negotiable. I feel the same way about Visual Voicemail, and that was a feature few even knew they wanted until they had it.

Production for the current can't keep up with demand, so you shoot out a bs rumor about Verizon?

Spare us all! Please.

Fantasy drivel. Not gonna happen.