xenadu

I think the iPhone is doing the same signal bars thing the other phones do where the bars show the 1X signal strength because I was picking up and losing LTE but when I was on LTE it was 2 bars. When on 3G I had three to four bars. It would appear that the iPhone prefers LTE if it can get it as well.

Still no LTE at home but out getting the car inspected and I'm on the edge of an LTE area but even with the marginal coverage speeds are way better than 3G.

Well all I will say is I have told 5-6 different folks to give the iPhone and try and flip it on eBay if they don't like it after three months. So far none of them have done so. No harm in trying it out. On the lightning adapter, I do think Apple should have lowered the price on those... It seems a bit excessive. That said, I find that I only plug my phone in to charge or in the car now. The $99 AppleTV lets me stream music, video, screen mirror, etc all wirelessly so I just don't use any of the audio/video out of the dock connector anymore. When I really looked at it, I need a lot less adapters than I thought I would. Plus it's Netflix is 10x better than my TV's crappy interface. I wish it had Amazon Prime Video too but fat chance

I want those frequencies for LTE bandwidth mostly.

Personal attacks aren't called for; I'm not mad at you, nor do I look down on you for your phone choices. I do think you hit on something though and it relates to that Samsung ad they just put out. Why does it make iPhone customers look like idiots? Surely that won't convince someone to switch to Samsung... And that's correct, it won't. That ad is designed to appeal to people who think they are superior, smarter, or more enlightened than Apple customers. It's an appeal to sanctimonious vanity, look at all those peasants... Er iSheep... Look at how much better/smarter/morally righteous I am than those commoners. I think this is a lot of what drives the rabid fanboy-ism on the anti and pro Apple sides... The desire to feel like you're better than other people and grasping for logical reasons to validate it. It's easy to get caught up in and I've been guilty of it at times too. In the end it's just a phone and Apple's just a company.

Odell you are quite correct. It all has to do with the things you value which is why it people just talk over each other sometimes... They value different things but each approaches the problem as if they agreed on value. I don't want to make security decisions about my phone. I hate that stupid permissions dialog on Android and that automatically disqualifies it from my life. It's not because I don't understand them, I'm just offended as a developer because I know 99.9% of all users have no clue what those permissions really mean or whether they should approve them or not. They just tap Yes. Same reason they hit OK to install random ActiveX controls on IE 6 and got infected with malware. I also love that AirPlay just works, zero configuration. I love that when my iPhone 5 arrives today and I sign in with iCloud I will get all my apps, music, settings, data, etc automatically with no work on my part to switch phones. I love that when my fiancé dropped her phone in the pool the local Apple store genius just gave us a new one at no cost, which is service you can't get with anyone else. I love the attention to detail, the fit and finish of both hardware and software. So the point is I value simplicity. I deal with complexity in the code I write, I don't need more of it in my life. My time is very limited these days so customization, rooting, widgets, etc (all strengths of Android) are completely useless to me personally. Almost no stores are using NFC, there are different incompatible implementations, etc so I find it useless. I don't need to beam stuff to people as iCloud automatically syncs apps and media between my Wife's phone and mine. Given that, it's no wonder I prefer Apple products. It's also no surprise that some people love their Android phones because they have the time and enjoy fiddling with it. Neither choice is right or wrong. Android just offers nothing of value to me - only additional headaches, with the "bonus" of having to waste my investment in the iOS ecosystem.

Well we can just agree to disagree then. Tell me... Why don't you try getting an iPhone for your next phone? I've tried Android devices, I don't care for them. Can you say the same about Apple? At least you can resell the iPhone for a good price and get your money back if you hate it.

I know that's the theory but all these same objections were raised about VoIP in general. I can remember having these same arguments with people back in 2002. They were wrong. We had the circuit vs packet switched war. Packets won. Deal with it. No one deploys non-VoIP phones in offices anymore. Millions and millions of people use Skype daily, including over things like WiFi connections and to interface with the regular telephone system. Millions of people use things like Vonage over a wide variety of ISPs. We understand how to do VoIP using QoS/priority systems and all the hardware supports it. LTE makes provision for giving a slice of priority bandwidth to handsets with voice traffic and all the switches/backhaul will drop data packets to make room for voice if needed. We've spent years working the bugs out; it's old technology at this point. He'll, my Airave pipes my Sprint calls over VoIP! We can agree to disagree but I'm sticking by my position that voice over IP is the future and the sooner the better.

A little bird told me all the Sprint stores in his market got 4 phones each so YMMV. Sometimes you can avoid lines by showing up early at places like Target/Sams, but with iPhones it is more difficult because the phones are specific to each carrier. Personally I'd just order one and wait for it to arrive. People love their iPhones; you're making the assumption that there are better phones for these people's needs. That's a bit arrogant isn't it? Why is it a crime to wait in line for an iPhone but not for a new gaming console or a new movie on release day? The bulk of iPhone owners don't line up on release day, it's just the super fans and early adopters - the same as it is for any tech product. The iPhone 5 is the first LTE phone to have the combination of light weight, thinness/small size, excellent performance, and great battery life. All other LTE phones up until now have had crap battery life or are huge bricks (relatively) to cram in a massive battery. What's not to like? Especially for those of us with large numbers of iOS apps or an investment in the Apple ecosystem. I will never use an Android phone and couldn't give less of a s**t about them, so "new iPhone" and "a new phone" might as well be synonymous. Not saying that does or should apply to anyone else, just my personal situation. I'm excited about it so go rain on someone else's parade. You don't see the iPhone users going into the Samsung forum to crap on their launches.

I'm not saying there will be no fallback mode but it is clear that CDMA is going to go away. Why wouldn't you just carry voice over the LTE data channel if you have it? Plus with LTE on 800Mhz there shouldn't be any coverage issues compared to CDMA voice.

As far as I know LTE requires 2 RX antennas (MISO/MIMO) so this would have required an extra antenna just to satisfy Sprint/Verizon, for a tech both are phasing out. I don't like it but I understand the decision. We got confirmation that they have solid state switches that latch in and out to dynamically change the size of the antenna, so I'm not shocked it would have been difficult to cram a third (four if you count WiFi/BT) into the package. I would also point out that Voice over LTE is an entirely software thing as it is just a VoIP call, so there is no technical reason it can't be enabled in the future, I think they just didn't test it because no one is really rolling it out. No idea why the carriers aren't launching with it... Skype, Vonage, et al have been doing VoIP for years, it's not a new technology.

Well Apple calls out the GSM frequencies as 850 now. It has every appearance of supporting it but maybe someone with more knowledge of the FCC filings can comment.

When you activate iPhones it contacts Apple's servers and downloads it's configuration, so if the phone was sold on Sprint it will use that configuration. The initial 4S devices were shipped unlocked and IIRC unless you did a factory reset/reactivation it doesnt download the file again... Or maybe they never updated the info for the old phones, not sure about that. Either way it is unlocked and can be used on another GSM carrier. They tell people it won't work on AT&T but I think it actually will. On the 4S (and presumably the iPhone 5), the CDMA radio still operates on the ESID # and neither Verizon nor Sprint will activate IDs not approved by them. This is not a technical limitation, it is a business decision to prevent people from switching between the two carriers. Looking back at it, I think Sprint wishes (or should be wishing) they had worked out a deal with Verizon to allow it as a hedge against ATT. I'm sure Verizon doesn't care at this point. The iPhone won't let you complete setup without a SIM but when operating on CDMA it doesn't consult or use it. When roaming internationally, both Sprint and VZW SIM cards have carrier IDs and your SIM has a customer ID that they can tie back to your account so they can bill you. LTE uses a SIM so in theory if you have an unlocked iPhone 5 and put a Sprint SIM in a Verizon phone it should work on the Sprint network, so long as the phone is unlocked. Whether Apple has allowed the carriers to set this kind of flag for LTE SIM cards I have no idea. But with the iPhone 5 you will need a working SIM or you can't get on the LTE network at all. CDMA still uses the phone's internal ESID # stuff, they did not adopt the CDMA SIM standard (I forget what this is called... RSIM?) All of this is really stupid; the only thing that should matter to the carrier is if you are paying your bill and fulfill your contract. If we still had a functioning, properly-funded government the FCC would pass regulation requiring all phones to be automatically unlocked when you finish your contract and require all CDMA carriers to accept any FCC-certified device so you could take your phone between carriers. If they tried it the carriers would sue them and it would be a huge kerfuffle, not that they'd attempt it anyway. The fact that the same people who own the pipes get to control the airwaves, or own the content, or both is absolute insanity and ripe for abuse but what else is new.

Don't forget the gobs of carrier crapware we'd be stuck with, or having to get carrier approval to put apps up for sale. The complete reliance on hardware keyboards and stylii (stylusssesss? ). Etc, etc. It looks like iPhone 5 supports CDMA on SMR 800Mhz. It supports CDMA Band Class 0, of which system A, sub-band 3 is the frequency range for the post-refarm Nextel frequencies. I haven't seen this explicitly confirmed anywhere but it seems to be the case. I think that also means it could support 3G on that band but not sure about that. We know it certainly supports the PCS G block. Given device turnover rates I would expect Sprint to rapidly switch channels to LTE until there is only one 3G data channel in each market. And as far as I know of the design, it can talk any of it's supported technologies on any of the ports so there is no reason it couldn't do LTE on 800 SMR too. In fact Anandtech had an article discussing lack of SVDO/SVLTE: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6295/why-the-iphone-5-lacks-simultaneous-voice-and-lte-or-evdo-svlte-svdo-support- In there he mentions that the iPhone was qualified with more bands than Apple lists as supported. In the future we should find out more about that... Especially the 2.6Ghz band which would be interesting for Clear offloading, but that one seems less plausible since I don't even think it has that band at all. On the SVDO/SVLTE thing the article clears up the issue... The other phones have an extra antenna and duplicate CDMA radio path to support the simultaneous voice, which obviously has space and battery life consequences. This totally fits Apple's MO: look at where the puck is going to be (Voice over LTE), and cut a feature only useful to a small segment of the market (Verizon, Sprint, and Japan's KDDI) in order to optimize other things (much better world-wide LTE support, smaller, lighter, better battery life). As far as the Sprint/Verizon/KDDI phone being separate from the world phone, it's obviously the same physical hardware, they just don't want to pay the CDMA licensing fee for 60% of their device sales when none of those people will ever use it. This time it's the AT&T phone that is the oddball, presumably with different filters, amps, etc to support the AT&T/Canada-specific frequencies. This makes the Sprint iPhone a better world phone.

Am I crazy or doesn't the Rev B1 HAC RF Test Report document list Voice over digital transport and concurrent single transmission for CDMA+LTE, in table 5.2? The footnote seems to say the rating was not based on concurrent voice/data mode because non-concurrent represented the worst-case rating? edit: I guess this is the hearing-aid test to make sure it doesn't interfere with them and that would make sense that CDMA 1xRTT is the worse-case for interference.

No on both counts, the iCloud for Windows control panel does the syncing as far as pulling down photos, syncing contacts, etc. I've gone iTunes-free on my stuff. There is iCloud.com where you can login and see your email, etc. But I also use some Google services and they work just fine with the iPhone. However since customization of the OS is an important feature for you then I wouldn't encourage you to get an iPhone - stick with Android. The plural of anecdote is not "data" I have an iPad for large-screen stuff so I personally prefer my phone to fit easily into my pocket without weighing me down, but that might not be the best choice for everyone. The number of non-geeks who even know what the specs mean (let alone care about them) is precisely and exactly zero people. I don't care how many milli-amp-hours my battery has, I care how long I can talk on it, how long I can browse on it, etc. So yes, the iPhone 5 has the 22nm Qualcomm MDM96xx series chip, which uses much less power. It also has a more energy-efficient screen because doing in-plane eliminates a layer (and gives better color), further reducing energy use. And the SoC uses a new smaller process node, again yielding benefits. But the end result of all that is that the battery life is a bit better than the previous generation (already excellent) but the phone is thinner and lighter. Why would I give a crap about the mAh? Rinse, repeat for graphics performance and overall snappiness. Come to the dark side... you'll like it over here Here's the thing... if you don't like the iPhone, you can always sell it for a good price and you'll have a better understanding of what is good/bad about it. Don't use iTunes at all, just use iCloud and never plug it in to a computer. Try it at least once; that's why I bought a Nexus tablet - I figured I should at least give it a chance.

Couple of things, in no specific order. 1. I guess you guys are still laboring under the idea that people care about specs. People care about the apps they can run, not the processor's Mhz or the amount of RAM. Most people don't even understand the difference between disk/SSD storage and RAM - they'll use the two terms interchangably. Android devices still have slower UIs than iPhones; they've gotten noticeably better with each major OS release and due to Moore's law but the difference remains. I would also remind you that there are tens (maybe hundreds?) of different Android phones on sale right now just in the US - most of which are mid-range or low-end models that aren't as capable or fancy as the latest-and-greatest, ship with an already out-of-date OS version, and will never see an update. If you think that doesn't color people's opinion when comparing with the iPhone then you are mistaken. Look at Samsung simplifying and shrinking their device lineup; Android handset makers should do more of this and stop selling crappy low-end devices that hurt their brand, but I suspect the carriers are driving that bus so I doubt it will happen. 2. I think the leaks really hurt their ability to surprise people with this one and I expect the secrecy cops at Apple to start going insane trying to lock down the leaks for future devices... the problem is Apple sells so damn many of them and launches in so many countries in such a short time that the secrecy may be impossible to maintain going forward because they have to manufacture so many of them starting at least a couple of months in advance. I also think some of the lack of surprise is mostly nerds/journalists who follow this stuff (most people don't), partially a sign of a maturing industry, and to some degree represents healthy competition in the industry. 3. Most people are on 2-year contracts and upgrade every two years. If you have an iPhone 4S I would *not* recommend upgrading, the 4S is a fine device. If you are concerned about cost then staying one model year behind is an excellent idea and unlike Android devices, you can be assured of new OS updates to your year-old device. Even the lowly 3GS, a phone introduced in 2009, is getting iOS 6. It may not be as speedy or have all of the new features but it works and you won't get left out of apps that start requiring iOS 6. That's about 1000x times better than all of the Android manufacturers combined and 1000000x better than Windows Phone, where the current devices won't ever run WinPhone 8. (Personally I have to upgrade to test my apps on the new device but that's an edge case - otherwise I wouldn't bother. I skipped the iPhone 4 since I was able to get a retina iPod Touch to do my testing). 4. They continue to focus on screen quality, graphics performance, thin & light, battery life, etc... the things people care about today. I'm not sure what you are expecting? The screen is in-plane touch, supports the full sRGB color space (extremely rare on almost all LCDs these days) and richer colors, and has reduced glare. The thing is thinner and lighter but managed to slighly improve battery life. The screen is bigger without being XBOX HUGE or impossible to operate with one hand... and in fact a bigger screen was the #1 thing people tended to complain about. What else are you expecting? Some manufacturers will continue to throw random features at the wall to see what stick but in general smart phones will simply continue to get faster, thinner, and lighter. If we ever see a real breakthrough with battery technology (like workable Lithium-air batteries) then they'll take a jump in battery life. 5. On NFC: It would have been nice but good luck getting merchants to upgrade. When we honeymooned in Canada recently everyone there had hand-held card scanners (and Canadian customers entered their PIN #s for a purchase). Even delivery drivers and waiters had them so the card never left your possession. Why haven't we already rolled this out in the states? It would cut down on a lot of fraud and is way easier than trying to read CC #s over the phone. It may eventually happen but I can promise you that 95% of everyone who sees these NFC image-macro jokes won't have a single clue what NFC is or why they'd want it. I suspect this is an area (like Apple with TV stuff) that is limited by entrenched players and Apple isn't willing to tackle something unless they believe they can add real value, but see below about that. 6. Everyone said the same BS about the iPhone 4S (what? it looks the same?!?!) but they sold more iPhone 4S devices then they had of any previous phone. They continue to break sales records and generate massive profits. Some of my AAPL shares have over doubled in value. So go ahead and pat yourself on the back for being so much smarter than everyone else. In the mean time we'll all go use the apps we love and get on with our lives And those of us smart enough to see Apple's greatness and buy shares will laugh all the way to the bank. Betting against Apple has been a losing proposition for 10 years now (no floppy drive?!? no serial ports?!?!? what, an mp3 player without wifi?!? Balmer on competing against the iPhone: "We like our chances". Laptops with internal batteries?!?! etc.) But no, these people are all just iSheep, buying Apple's nonsense.... right. Apple never innovates, brings nothing to the table. OK buddy, maybe if you keep believing that hard enough it will come true some day. 7. The camera - you should check out the video. This thing takes pictures insanely fast. The low-light performance is fantastic... I'm shocked it can do what it does with such a tiny sensor. Covering the lens with synthetic sapphire so it is extremely difficult to scratch is a nice move - that's why high-end watches use it. Lots of people have been won-over by the iPhone's camera and I predict more of the same for the future. The Lens alignment stuff will impress photography geeks but I predict most users won't care. 8. The new connector - About time and I am extremely happy it connects in either direction. The dock connector was OK for its time but I never really liked it and am happy to see it go away. It is also smart that it is digital and dynamic - it should last more than a decade since it can be enhanced, the speed can be increased, etc all without changing the connector or losing backward compatibility. If you've ever looked at the dock connector pinouts - it was ridiculous what they had to do to overload certain pins based on resistance values on other pins, etc. Downside is the price for the adapters though... I understand the new cables/adapters have actual chips in them that process the digital signal, converting it to other formats or outputting analog signals, but Apple should have lowered the price by $10 for both the adapter and extension cable. 9. I think Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, etc all have a huge problem on their hands... the existing ISPs want a piece of the money and are slowly clamping down with data caps, bandwidth restrictions, etc in order to get it. The day is coming soon where buying a movie isn't just $9.99 on one of these digital stores - it will also cost you $1.20 in data charges from your ISP. Whether you pay it directly or people like Netflix pay for access on the back-end, it will ultimately come out of your pocket. On the other end, the content owners are being ridiculous... part of that is the media empires where the cable company owns a movie studio and broadcast network, thus trying to ensure you can't cut the cord and forcing high prices for digital movies. I think in the future Apple, Google, etc are going to *have* to put up cash to fund a new ISP that goes out and lays fiber, at least to the top metro areas. The US government and state governments have simply been bought and there is zero chance of any internet infrastructure projects (like the railroads where all the long-distance and trans-contitental rails were public-private partnerships or interstate highways), nor of any actual reform of the dualopoly situation. So this will be critical for them to compete in the future and they had better get on it sooner rather than later before more states pass bills making it illegal to compete with the telcos (see Tenn, Kentucky, etc). They will also need to start buying some studios and cable networks or just start their own. Again, fund it at arms-length, but you need to do something to break the hold these guys have on the content industry. Do away with artificial release dates and other nonsense.... the day I see a trailer on TV for a movie I should be able to go download it. The rest is just BS to protect an outdated business model. 10. Inductive charging - this is one place I think Apple is dead wrong about and they need to get this into their devices ASAP. I want a single mat I can plug in and cover my nightstand with so when I lay my iPhone and iPad down they just charge. It's an annoyance to have to plug your devices in every night. Granted - the new connector will help - but as long as batteries are stuck on Li-ion tech we'll have to charge them regularly and we might as well make that easier. So that's it; I expect the iPhone 5 to sell really well and I expect it will continue to have the lowest return rate and highest satisfaction in the industry. I expect certain geeky folks to moan and complain about this spec, that spec, or some random doodad that no one cares about so they can feel smugly superior to the plebs (what Android activism is really about), and I continue to expect them to be ignored. Oh and I continue to expect certain hardcore (and also smug) Apple fans to have no perspective and an inability to call Apple out where they mis-step but that's nothing new.

I find your signature to be an ironic confirmation that Apple both deserves to win this case and should sue the rest of the Android handset makers (though they won't). What happens in 2007? Hmmm... Good question. Gee... Why do all of the 2007 & after phones all look completely different from the ones before? But hey... Apple never innovates. They never changed the cell phone game. If the iPhone never existed I'm sure Android would have magically switched gears from being a BlackBerry clone for no reason whatsoever. Surely the carriers would have stopped shipping phones crippled with features disabled and stopped having veto power over apps (Sprint never did respond to my 2004 request about writing mobile Java apps for their phones). I mean duh, screw Apple! They are hurting consumers!

First of all, patents are for a limited period of time... 20 years. Now I happen to agree that 20 years is too long in the software world but your example is horrible in two ways: all of Ford's original patents would have long expired and secondly people did patent automobile concepts and Ford fought a long legal battle over it (and largely lost), thus early car makers *did* pay royalties to the patent holders. I think this lawsuit is a good result. We all know the history - Google switched Android from being a BlackBerry clone to an iOS clone and copied iOS after they saw its success. Samsung went further and ripped off the iPhone hardware and design. Google told them flat out that they were going to get burned but they went ahead anyway. That isn't the only way to make a smartphone - Windows Phone proves you can do something totally unique. WebOS is another one, as is the new BlackBerry 10. All patents look obvious in hindsight and that's a question the courts have wrestled with for many, many years... Precisely because every jackass with an opinion goes "duh that's so simple it shouldn't be patentable". Almost all of the summaries are vast over-simplifications or gross misunderstandings. For example the "double tap" patent is actually a patented way of having the user make a gesture (double tap, triple tap, or whatever), examining an HTML document, understanding the meaning of the document, determining the user's most likely target, zooming to that target, then reflowing the rest of the document to make it readable while still preserving the document structure (eg: two column-layout stays correctly formatted as two columns). That's a hell of a lot more complicated than saying "hurrrrr apple is trying to patent double taps!!!!!!!". If Samsung (or anyone else) were going to make something as good or better than the iPhone anyway then why did they wait so long? Simple... They were complacent in their cozy carrier relationships. Consumers were not the customer, carriers were. Apple was the first one to break out of that awful structure. Apple invented a whole new multitouch UI paradigm. Were there inklings or traces of some of those ideas already out there? Sure... But Edison wasn't the first person to tackle the incandescent light bulb, nor was Ford the first to tackle the automobile. Almost no invention is truly 100% independently invented and if that's the standard then no one can ever profit from their inventions. Even taking all existing concepts and combining them in a new and interesting way is a valid invention that deserves to be rewarded. I would also point out that the jury rejected all the tablet-related claims precisely because they felt that it had too much prior art out there like StarTrek PADDs and the like. Samsung is a horrible company that copies ideas from many companies in many industries and relies on their huge size and massive reach into many industries to protect them from consequences. If this case were a small company vs Samsung people would be more rational about it, but the name Apple automatically triggers insanity and seems to force people to mash the POST button without thought. I'm glad they lost and I hope the judge sticks it to them hardcore. That is how you will see innovation flourish... By having companies come up with entirely new ways of doing touch UI on phones, not having them clone iOS.

I left Sprint to get the iPhone. Came back when then got it. Its really that simple. I really don't care what your opinion of Apple is.

Well they need this to keep customers and attract new ones. They won't survive for long selling dial-up speeds even if it is unlimited. Their stated goal of 6Mbps LTE average is about 40X-50X what most people get in reality (3-4X in theory). Shutting down iDEN should free up cash to take that 20X backhaul and bump it further to keep up with current customers and new customers.

FYI: Dan basically hinted that Sprint would carry the iPad during a press Q&A. He said something like "I'm not going to answer that, but that's a good question". I suspect it was the LTE issue, otherwise it complicates the marketing message.

Apple just doesn't work that way and never will. They will release whatever they think is a good product when it is ready. They don't put nearly as much stock in the "business 101"-type decisions as people seem to think. Sometimes they won't enter a market even though they know there is demand because they don't know how to make something that is way better than the competition or is up to their quality standards (ex why no Apple television even though tons of people would buy it? Well what good is it if you are stuck with the same crappy DVR from the cable co? Or the same confusing mess of cables and receiver BS? They won't release a television until they can make one that is leaps and bounds above what you can do today. Then everyone will copy it and in 3-5 years people will say Apple never invents anything and how people are just iSheep, etc. Meanwhile I'll continue to clutch my AAPL stock, laughing maniacally at all you anti-Apple folk all the way to the bank) I would also point out that Apple manufactures prototype devices all the time that never end up being sold for one reason or another, even going so far as to have Foxconn's prototype shop put in a limited production run. They also do this with designs they absolutely know they will not be releasing to keep people guessing and keep the rumor mill going. They could have an entirely new design but put these believable plans out there to keep people off guard. Or it could be the real deal. Never trust the Apple rumors.

Just FYI: the new Qualcomm chip supports any tech on any of the frequencies so if it supports 800 SMR then it should support GSM, CDMA 1X, EVDO, and LTE. It all comes down to ports. The new chip adds a couple of extra ports. So Apple just has to decide what frequencies to hook up to those ports. If it came down to needing an extra antenna, etc for 1700 but they can re-use the existing 800 antenna for Sprint then maybe that leads to SMR support. Someone told me some Japanese carriers use SMR so maybe that factors into it. Or maybe Apple tells Qualcomm to sell them a specialized package with the MDM9615 and a port switch on one chip for the same price and Apple adds 10 new frequency bands because they need to support China and since they'll need to spend the money/power/engineering on it anyway why not just support everything? We have no way of knowing at this point - its all just speculation.

Hmmm... You know I think it is backhaul delays. I just turned my Airave off and I am getting 3 bars solid here now, before I was getting one-two bars if I was lucky. But the download speed is still crap. It makes me think they upgraded the towers to NV equipment even though the backhaul isn't ready yet. Not certain but it seems plausible. I'll keep testing over the next few days.