No 4G coming to iPhone 5

With all the independent verification going on about the new iPhone coming in January, there’s been very little mention about whether the iPhone 5 will have LTE and 4G support. TechCrunch is reporting that the iPhone 5 will forgo chipsets that allow for 4G network usage on the device.

Citing historical normalities, Steve Cheney points out that Apple waited to support 3G, and instead adopted 2.5G EDGE support, despite the availability of 3G in 2007. It seems, according to Cheney, that Apple’s going to be avoiding the first generation 4G chipsets, and instead will focus on bringing the new iPhone 5 to both the CDMA and GSM networks.

Apple doesn’t want to mess with the first generation of LTE chipsets, since they will be bulky and power hungry. Instead, Apple will make a unified model that works across 3G networks on all carriers, and innovate with incredible new features like NFC which mirror what they accomplished with FaceTime on iPhone 4.

There’s a benefit to extending the 3G network, instead of jumping quickly to the 4G network, and given the problems with the iPhone 4, Apple’s likely going to be reluctant to adopt any new technologies in their next device before they’re thoroughly tested, and have had the proper amount of time to evolve.

Article Via TechCrunch

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