iPhone 5 and iPad 3 AWS chipset rumors keep surfacing, may be closer than we think

Both the T-Mobile CEO and a Morgan Stanley analyst are offering up best-guesses regarding the chipsets that will be included in the iPhone 5 and the iPad 3 that are likely to be released sometime this year. It looks like AWS could be here sooner than we thought.

Yesterday Philipp Humm, T-Mobile CEO, pointed out that the lack of iPhone on the T-Mobile network has everything to do with T-Mobile’s reliance on the AWS band, but then commented that chipsets are evolving, and that the iPhone and iPad could have AWS support in their next iterations. There was some hubbub over whether the T-Mobile CEO was speaking from a position of knowledge at the time of publication, but T-Mobile has since clarified that their comments were speculation.

ExtremeTech says that a number of the iPhones currently on the market have chipsets that support AWS; however, there are other hardware factors that limit its use:

If the iPhone 5 uses a Skyworks LPIA for 3G again [like in the 4S], it would probably use the Skyworks 77602 LPIA, which supports UMTS 850/900/1700/1900/2100 and CDMA 850/1700/1900/2100. Already, the iPhone 4S uses a custom unit and separate power amplifiers for HSPA+ and CDMA2000, which it shouldn’t have to. Using this unified LPIA would allow Apple a little more room to put something else on it, like an LTE power amplifier. If the next iPhone does use the above mentioned Skyworks LPIA, then it will also work on MetroPCS and Cricket’s AWS CDMA networks as well as T-Mobile’s AWS HSPA+ network.

Obviously, at this stage of the game everything in this post is considered speculative at best; however, the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 could very easily become the first Apple devices to support AWS. The ExtremeTech article provides some nice information about AWS support in the iPhone, and how some of the chipsets included in previous iPhones have had partial AWS support already. Give it a read.

Image Credit: Eric Rihlmann

Joshua is the Content Marketing Manager at BuySellAds. He’s also the founder of Macgasm.net. And since all that doesn’t quite give him enough content to wrangle, he’s also a technology journalist in his spare time, with bylines at PCWorld, Macworld and TechHive.