Published in Mobiles

Next Verizon iPhone to be global

by on22 April 2011


Will offer GSM and CMDA support
Verizon CFO Fran Shammon let the cat out of the bag, so to speak, telling those on a recent earnings call that the next Verizon iPhone offering will be a “global device” or world phone, if you will, meaning that it will support both Verizon’s CMDA network as well as GSM networks outside North America.

It is suspected that the new iPhone model for Verizon will use Qualcomm’s world-mode MDM600 wireless chip, which is already in the current Verizon iPhone, but the GSM isn’t enabled to simplify antenna construction and design. It was apparently a trade-off that Verizon elected to make for their first iPhone release by making it a CMDA-only model.

It is suspected that Apple will move to unified design for the iPhone 5 that will support both CDMA and GSM out of the box and will be controlled by the firmware and configuration of the phone. It would simplify Apple’s production if they made just one phone and the firmware dictated which features where enabled and how they were enabled. This would be a cost cutting move for Apple.

The latest from our sources is that Apple will launch the iPhone 5 in September of this year. As we told you above, we suspect that the unified design is one of the goals for the iPhone 5. In addition, we are hearing a lot of rumbling that the iPhone 5 will also be offered for the first time in a 64GB configuration, which has been rumored for a long time.
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