If there’s one rumor that fails to die and just keeps going strong, it’s a CDMA iPhone. More specifically, a model designed to work just for the Verizon network. Yesterday a regional Verizon president said that an iPhone on Verizon is inevitable, but it’s just a matter of when. Now Pegatron Technology is rumored to have received an order for CDMA versions of Apple’s prized smartphone. Could this really be happening now after years of rumors that have never panned out?
Tech pundits, analysts, bloggers and armchair tech critics alike have been speculating that there will be an iPhone bound for the largest network in America by next year. Their reasoning? AT&T allowed for much earlier contract upgrades just for the new handset – upgrades that most people normally wouldn’t have qualified for under any other circumstance. And so the speculation is that the carrier is trying to lock down as many customers as it can before its precious smartphone heads to Verizon’s shores.
Or maybe AT&T just wants to lock down more customers for the sake of, well, locking down more customers. It’s not like other carriers are getting tempting alternatives for consumers like the EVO 4G, Droid X or Samsung Galaxy S…
So just when will these alleged CDMA iPhones hit? DigiTimes reports that Pegatron will be shipping the CDMA units to Apple during the fourth quarter according to sources. Of course, if we’re going to play the fun speculation game, we might as well go ahead and predict that these new iPhones will also come with LTE radios since Verizon is planning on aggressively going live with 4G next year.
What do you think? How awesome would it be to have an iPhone on Verizon’s solid network and have it part of its LTE efforts, too? After all, the nation’s biggest carrier is planning on having a complete 3G overlay done, LTE absolutely everywhere, by 2013. Or will the rampant data use on the device cripple the network like it did with AT&T?
[Via: DigiTimes]