Why the iPhone 5 Lacks Support for Simultaneous Voice and LTE or EVDO (SVLTE, SVDO)
by Brian Klug AnandTech 9/14/2012 So we've seen the new iPhone, and had a chance to briefly play with it at the demo room, but as I've learned in the past so many times you only really know a handset after you've taken a look at the FCC test reports or spent a few days with it yourself. On my flights home, I typed up our iPod and EarBud impressions piece, but also pored over those FCC test reports for the iPhone 5, and it became immediately obvious the iPhone 5 doesn't support simultaneous voice and data on CDMA2000 carriers such as Sprint and Verizon in the US. The reasons, as always, are somewhat technical but at a high level pretty simple. Suffice it to say that at a high level this is a design decision which makes the phone as small and light as it is (it really is light, almost alarmingly so) and enables it to support a wide number of LTE bands, rather than some major oversight like I've seen it portrayed. First, a bit of overview. At the Apple event there were two physical hardware models for the iPhone 5 announced: A1428 and A1429, with three different provisioning configurations. There are hardware differences between the two models, and what provisioning boils down to is both how the phone is initially provisioned, and likely what AMSS (Advanced Mobile Subscriber Software - Qualcomm's software package that runs on the baseband) gets loaded at boot. This is analogous to how with iPhone 4S there was a single hardware model, but two different configurations for CDMA and GSM. For the most part, the two hardware models are identical, and to most users the two models will be indistinguishable, but there are physical differences to accommodate a number of different LTE bands between the two. The Apple iPhone 5 specs page lists this at a high level, and there's an even more explicit LTE specific page with a list of what LTE bands work for what carriers. Of course, what ultimately really matters is what's in the FCC docs and in the hardware, and looking at those there are a few more bands supported than listed for LTE. ... http://www.anandtech.com/show/6295/why-the-iphone-5-lacks-simultaneous-voice-and-lte-or-evdo-svlte-svdo-support- _______________________________________________ Please be sure to include a URL to the article. Reply to the sender with a "Thank you" if you like this post. _______________________________________________ Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
