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| An LTE iPhone could disrupt the UK mobile market |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-08-21 15:27:59 |
| Vlad Savov at The Verge: "Today's been rather a momentous day in the UK mobile arena, following local regulator Ofcom's approval of Everything Everywhere's plans to use existing spectrum to roll out LTE service early. Vodafone, O2 and Three have complained in unison against the market distortions that would result from one carrier having 4G while everyone else waits for an oft-delayed auction, but their biggest fear may yet remain unspoken: a de facto exclusive on the next iPhone." |
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| RE[2]: Comment by MOS6510 |
| By MOS6510 on 2012-08-21 18:57:33 |
|
Any change is always bound to increase prices for us. LTE has a theoretical speed most if not all people will never get anyway. Rumor has it the new iPhone's battery has only a slightly larger capacity. Unless they have some new generation LTE chips it may cut its operation time shorter than the iPhone 4/4S. I'd prefer it to be a bit longer. In a way it's a kind of disgrace these cell phones, Apple and others, barely make it to the end of the day on their battery charge. I'd say make it 2 days and even that's crap. You can't use your phone without any power outlets nearby. |
 - Score: 2 |
| RE[4]: Comment by MOS6510 |
| By zima on 2012-08-21 19:32:29 |
|
W8, weren't Nordic NMT networks switched off a few years ago? (and what do you mean by "the ocean" - Skagerrak?! :P Surely not the Baltic lake...) |
| - Score: 2 |
| Pure hype. |
| By unclefester on 2012-08-22 02:37:09 |
|
Pure hype. Only one Australian carrier has LTE -Telstra. Four LTE compatible phones are available from Telstra - two Samsung and two HTC. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Comment by MOS6510 |
| By WorknMan on 2012-08-22 06:24:10 |
|
> For me 3G is fast enough. I'd rather have 3G everywhere, there are still some black holes. As they couldn't fix these over the last few years I doubt 4G coverage would be better than 3G's. Plus, for the carriers (in the US) that do have decent 4g coverage, they cap their data plans such that you can't do anything interesting with it anyway, so might as well stick with 3g/HSPA+. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[3]: Comment by MOS6510 |
| By Neolander on 2012-08-22 07:24:11 |
|
As for battery life, I believe that from a theoretical point of view, 4G chips should be able to eat up less battery than 3G chips when offering equivalent performance. That's because to qualify as "4G" under the requirements of the UIT, tech like LTE Advance is supposed to use an all-IP network, in which even voice and texts go through the data connection of the phone, unlike 3G tech which has to maintain two simultaneous cellular connexions, one for voice and texts and one for data. Of course, this is again purely theoretical, and I am sure that current 4G phones will manage to waste even more power than 3G ones in spite of this. Besides, low nework coverage has never been a good thing for battery life. |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[4]: Comment by MOS6510 |
| By MOS6510 on 2012-08-22 07:28:22 |
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I believe a problem with the early 4G handsets was battery life. This may be a reason of the Android phones with big screens: they're big anyway because of the battery to support 4G so you might as well put a screen on it. Of course in the IT world time flies and things improve fast. Somewhere I still have a Dell Axim X3i PocketPC. If you turn WiFi on you can almost see the battery run out of the room. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[5]: Comment by MOS6510 |
| By Neolander on 2012-08-22 07:42:45 |
|
I don't think that increasing screen size to solve battery problems would work. The extra screen area eats up a lot of battery too... Maybe at some point, manufacturers will start to put gigantic empty areas around the screen to this end though. After all, the obvious option of making thicker phones seems so unacceptable to them nowadays... |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[6]: Comment by MOS6510 |
| By MOS6510 on 2012-08-22 08:25:17 |
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Increasing the screen size won't make the battery run longer, but it does fill up space that would be unused. But it's a shame batteries keep improving all the time, but the hardware needs more and more power keeping the running time about the same. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[4]: Comment by MOS6510 |
| By JAlexoid on 2012-08-22 08:48:42 |
|
What people forget is that there is still no VoLTE with seamless downgrade available in phones(switching from packet 4G to switched 3G/2G). Up until then I doubt that VoLTE will be used much. Mobile broadband is a better option, where all practical LTE deployments in EU have been to date. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Comment by MOS6510 |
| By henderson101 on 2012-08-22 10:42:29 |
| There aren't a "few" black holes. As a real world example - there is no 2G (let alone 3G) on the train mainline from the South Coast between Petersfield and Guildford. Not on O2, not on Vodafone and not on 3. Given O2 and Vodafone together are close to 50% of the UK carrier market, isn't that pretty pathetic? That's 40 minutes of a 1.5 hour journey on the mainline commuter backbone! From Guildford, the reception is spotty, and the closer you get to central London, the more bogged down it is and the slower the speed is. And yet we now have WiFi on the Tube? I'd LOL if it wasn't so depressing. |
| - Score: 2 |
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