It’s just days past CES 2011 and apparently the only rumor that seemed to hog the floor was the Verizon iPhone. It was apparently confirmed by WSJ and “people that are familiar with the matter” (which was repeated several times in the article) that the phone will be announced on Tuesday Jan. 11th and launch next month on February 3rd. The only problem that I have with this is that EVERYONE is still saying CDMA, based upon reports that Qualcomm has been ramping up inventory and is now selling baseband chips to Apple. Qualcomm is apparently the largest provider of the CDMA based chips, so this is why this seems to be the loudest theory out there.
Well, as much as I want to go with this, something tells me that this is just wrong. No matter what my favorite tech blog Engadget has to say. Just based upon the latest “evidence” that we have.. it doesn’t seem to mesh well. I am thinking that the Qualcomm story is something to throw us off the scent. Let’s look at the picture that Engadget posted with their story:
Do you see what I see? There is still a SIM card slot in that ever so slightly “tweaked” iPhone chassis. Oh you want a little more evidence? Let’s take a look at the video that was pulled down by Apple due to copyright issues (then later reposted with a different title & Engadget re-encoded it for their own player):
Did you see that? There is still a SIM card slot on that phone. Now, anyone with any Verizon CDMA 3G phone, please feel free to email me with a picture of your SIM card that you got from Verizon. It just doesn’t add up. I recently just helped a friend install the VZ Access Manager on their new laptop with the new LGv600 USB modem (or whatever that thing is) that supports 4G. You want to know what was inside that modem? It was a SIM card that said Verizon 4G LTE. You want to know why? It is because Verizon is now a GSM carrier! You can read more about the history on that in my previous post.
I just don’t see Apple choosing to go with a dying technology. Same as with the reasons they chose to keep flash out of the iOS enviroment (i think they are just trying to kill flash all together), they want to be on the forefront of technology, and since Verizon is one of the first to launch LTE stateside, why not? iPhone 4… iPhone 4G… it makes better since, then to stick with old 3G technology that we have all grown to hate when there are no towers… Even At&t is finally announcing 4G, even though they are the last on the bandwagon.
I’m calling this one… right now.. even if I’m wrong, thanks for reading this far.
UPDATE: It seems there are some people that are starting to agree with me, but saying it will be a dual mode phone. I just don’t see CDMA being the technology, especially since CDMA doesn’t allow for simultaneous calling and surfing. That was the big thing that AT&T was touting last year in their ads with that Wilson brother. How Verizon can’t do that with CDMA. So why would iPhone 4 be a multitasking phone, that couldn’t multitask under CDMA???
More Evidence: Back in 2009, the CEO Ivan Seidenberg at Verizon said: “Apple will be more willing to work with Verizon in the future on an LTE-equipped version of the iPhone.” According to Seidenberg, Apple never considered building a CDMA version of the iPhone due to CDMA’s more limited distribution footprint.
