Monday, February 7, 2011

Verizon's iPhone Could Have Been a World Phone?

By Kyle VanHemert

Verizon's iPhone Could Have Been a World Phone?

As they're wont to do, iFixit and 9to5Mac have (separately) torn apart the new Verizon iPhone, discovering some small changes and one big one: the Qualcomm MDM6600 chip inside. That chipset supports both GSM and CDMA transmission (HSPA+ data rates up to 14.4 Mbps) and it happens to be the one that you'll find inside a Droid Pro world phone.

So why isn't Verizon's a dual mode Super-iPhone? iFixit notes that it might've been "easier to design antennas for a CDMA-only phone—this phone supports two cellular frequency bands, while Apple supports five bands in the GSM version."

There are other small but not insignificant changes, too. As listed by 9to5Mac:

vibrator
speaker housing
cable protector
cable goes under the battery to reach the logic board
logic boards have different connectors in differnt places
More screws holding the board down
Headphone jack
Different cover for the front facing camera
Dock connector flex
Different frame for the glass

So for now, the dual mode chip is just the Verizon iPhone's little secret. But now that Apple's done going steady with AT&T, building a single iPhone that could work on all networks would certainly streamline their operation. Here's to hoping that the next iPhone will actually do GSM and CDMA double duty. [iFixit and 9to5Mac]