This just shows that Markoff is absolutely clueless when it comes to mobile phones. Upgrading a phone from EDGE to UMTS is not something that can be done in software. It would be like trying to upgrade a CD drive to a DVD drive with a firmware update. UMTS/WCDMA requires complex programming that has to be done in hardware, and nobody would be stupid enough to put UMTS hardware into a phone and then use some kind of software lock to scale it back to EDGE.
So to sum up, Markoff is an idiot for a) believing that you can software-upgrade from 2.75G to 3G and b) listening to so-called "Apple insiders" who aren't insiders at all.
"This just shows that Markoff is absolutely clueless when it comes to mobile phones. Upgrading a phone from EDGE to UMTS is not something that can be done in software. It would be like trying to upgrade a CD drive to a DVD drive with a firmware update. UMTS/WCDMA requires complex programming that has to be done in hardware, and nobody would be stupid enough to put UMTS hardware into a phone and then use some kind of software lock to scale it back to EDGE."
RIM was, the 8700 series have UTMS radios that aren't active. Every UMTS chipset can fall back on EDGE. It's fully possible that there is a UMTS capable chipset in the iPhone that isn't being utilized to it's full capability for variety of reasons.
MPG - this is pretty much correct, but there are plausible reasons why this could be the case. Hypothetically, the power-hungry UMTS radio may have dropped the iPhone's talk time to 3 hours with something like an unacceptable 12 hour standby. Or, Apple may have crammed so much into it that they realistically expect problems with FCC approval with active UMTS. Or, it may not even be blocked, and in the 6 month period between launch and availability, they may just want some big "new" announcement to make to get people excited again.
Nobody's saying full UMTS support can be crafted in firmware, but just like the "hidden" and locked 802.11 draft-N implementation in all their notebooks, Apple could easily have the hardware installed, with only EDGE functionality enabled for the time being. That could easily be unlocked with a firmware update.
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This just shows that Markoff is absolutely clueless when it comes to mobile phones. Upgrading a phone from EDGE to UMTS is not something that can be done in software. It would be like trying to upgrade a CD drive to a DVD drive with a firmware update. UMTS/WCDMA requires complex programming that has to be done in hardware, and nobody would be stupid enough to put UMTS hardware into a phone and then use some kind of software lock to scale it back to EDGE.
So to sum up, Markoff is an idiot for a) believing that you can software-upgrade from 2.75G to 3G and b) listening to so-called "Apple insiders" who aren't insiders at all.
"This just shows that Markoff is absolutely clueless when it comes to mobile phones. Upgrading a phone from EDGE to UMTS is not something that can be done in software. It would be like trying to upgrade a CD drive to a DVD drive with a firmware update. UMTS/WCDMA requires complex programming that has to be done in hardware, and nobody would be stupid enough to put UMTS hardware into a phone and then use some kind of software lock to scale it back to EDGE."
RIM was, the 8700 series have UTMS radios that aren't active. Every UMTS chipset can fall back on EDGE. It's fully possible that there is a UMTS capable chipset in the iPhone that isn't being utilized to it's full capability for variety of reasons.
MPG - this is pretty much correct, but there are plausible reasons why this could be the case. Hypothetically, the power-hungry UMTS radio may have dropped the iPhone's talk time to 3 hours with something like an unacceptable 12 hour standby. Or, Apple may have crammed so much into it that they realistically expect problems with FCC approval with active UMTS. Or, it may not even be blocked, and in the 6 month period between launch and availability, they may just want some big "new" announcement to make to get people excited again.
Nobody's saying full UMTS support can be crafted in firmware, but just like the "hidden" and locked 802.11 draft-N implementation in all their notebooks, Apple could easily have the hardware installed, with only EDGE functionality enabled for the time being. That could easily be unlocked with a firmware update.