Hello World (iPhone)
So those rumors that had Apple developing a “World iPad” based on one of Qualcomm’s multimode CDMA-GSM chips? There may be something to them after all.
An iFixit teardown of the CDMA iPhone 4 headed for Verizon reveals a world mode chip in the device’s innards: Qualcomm’s MDM6600, which supports CDMA and EVDO network standards as well as GSM and HSPA+. It’s the same chip used in the Droid Pro, Motorola’s “global ready” Android phone.
In other words, Verizon’s CDMA iPhone isn’t a world phone–but it could have been, given a SIM card and some additional engineering. Which makes it likely that the next iteration of the iPhone will be. And if iPhone 5 proves to be global ready, iPad 2 likely will be as well, as Wedge analyst Brian Blair, who first floated the idea of the World iPad, notes.
“This is the proof of my thesis, I think,” he said of iFixit’s findings. “This is a dual–band GSM/CDMA chip that I believe will not only be in a “World iPad” in April as I mentioned last Fall but I also expect it will be in the new iPhone 5 in June. It makes sense for many reasons: but the main one is that Apple engineers will only have to design a product one time, same guts and parts for GSM as for CDMA.”
[Image credit: iFixit]