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Verizon: LTE tablets and phones coming by May 2011, first demos will be in January at CES

Categories: Infrastructure, LTE, Verizon
By: , IntoMobile
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 at 4:47 AM

During the Reuters Global Technology Summit, Verizon Chief Executive Lowell McAdam said that the operator will have multiple tablets, and 3 to 5 LTE enabled phones hitting the market by May 2011. Motorola, Samsung and LG will be making tablets, and Motorola, HTC, LG and RIM are making phones. Many of the tablets that Verizon plans on selling will be coming out in Q4 of this year, and they’ll initially be CDMA only, but “upgradeable” to LTE. How that’ll happen is something we’re all curious to see.

The first public demonstration of LTE enabled tablets and mobile phones will happen in January at the Consumer Electronics Show according to McAdam, and that by the end of 2013 all of Verizon’s network will be upgraded to support LTE, thereby covering 285 million people.

I’m skeptical about these LTE mobile phones. Will Verizon do voice over LTE, or will these 3 to 5 handsets be like the HTC Evo 4G on Sprint, meaning they’ll have a CDMA radio for voice and 3G data, and a WiMAX radio for when you really need to download those 50 MB PowerPoint files in a pinch? How long will a dual mode LTE/CDMA device run on battery? How will Verizon price their LTE service?

All questions we’ll have to wait until Q4 to find the answers to.

[Via: MSNBC]

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

  • defiant103

    WiMAX is a wireless wide area network akin to the wifi in your house, just with a ton more power.

    LTE is an actual evolution of the 3G standard. Technically, it's as close to real 4g as you can get without actually being 4g, which is known officially as LTE Advanced – which noone has stated they will be rolling out yet. They'll still call it 4g… dunno why.

    apple…highly doubtful they have an lte ready device coming in jan. What good would an lte iphone do on a network that wont be rolled out till 5 months later? In 2012ish, apple can just release a G4S and claim they made it even better (again) and get another slew of sales off the same design. Remember, apple is apple – they are all about making money with the least amount of effort and holding out as long as they can on technologies that will let them re-release a device.

    ciao