Apple’s Verizon iPhone In “AP” Stage, The Last One Before Retail Release
Apple's iPhone 4
Today will most likely end with a lot of news regarding Apple. After mentioning what Apple’s fourth quarter results were and what the company’s CEO Steve Jobs talked about during a call conference, we’re now back to talk about one very illusive phone, the iPhone that should eventually become available for sale through Verizon Wireless. As some people may already know, rumors regarding the Verizon version of the Apple smartphone have been running around the web for months. Despite that, both Apple and Verizon Wireless have declared on multiple occasions that they have nothing to announce regarding a partnership for the time being. They didn’t say much about what will happen in the future though.
According to Boy Genius Report, one of its very reliable “solid Apple sources” has mentioned that the iPhone 3.2 (name based on what was previously discovered in iOS code- the iPhone 4, for example, is model 3,1) finally managed to make its way into “AP testing phase”. Now, if you’re wondering like me what AP testing phase really is, it means, for short, that the handset has reached a stage in which its hardware is final and the software onboard is almost ready. The same source claims that the phone has a SIM card slot. This was considered a bit odd by some because the 3.2 was believed to be the CDMA phone which would make its way to Verizon Wireless and/or other CDMA carriers worldwide. Yep, that’s the same handset we’ve heard about on oh so many occasions before, the one the Wall Street Journal is nearly sure will hit the market in the first few months of the following year. Judging by 3,2’s development stage, it may well be released exactly in that period of time. So, what conclusions can we draw from what we just found out? Well, there are several scenarios that we can start exploring until this mysterious handset hits the market and we get to find out for sure.
First of all, we could jump to the conclusion that Apple is working on a CDMA/GSM handset which would work on all major carriers worldwide. The handset could be used on Verizon, AT&T and more. This would greatly simplify things because Apple would only have to come up with one device for all carriers rather than having to come up with two different versions for CDMA and GSM technologies.
Another more reasonable scenario is that the iPhone 3,2 will be just another iPhone 4 with some minor tweak. A lot of people believe that Apple was considering re-designing the antenna to avoid any future problems. Other people argue that if Apple is working on making a GSM/CDMA dual handset, the company might as well stop to fix the antenna issues as well. The last possible scenario which someone cleverly pointed out in a comment, and possibly the only realistic one of the bunch is that this phone will be released for use on Verizon Wireless’ upcoming LTE network. Long Term Evolution technology requires a handset to host a SIM card slot and uses SIM cards much like GSM, but also requires that a phone has a CDMA radio. LTE supports seamless passing to cell towers with older network technology such as GSM, cdmaOne, UMTS, and CDMA2000.
The conclusion is simple. Apple, as always, is pretty good at protecting its development and production process and we’ll most likely find out what’s in store for us a short while before the release of the product. But the way things are going, and in light of Verizon and Apple’s partnership over distributing the iPad -which first off means that Apple is interested in enlarging its tablet distribution circle and secondly could be interpreted as a trial partnership – we’ll get to see a Verizon iPhone in 2011. Along with this information, BGR has also managed to find out that the next generation iPhone (let’s call it the iPhone 5) has hit the “EVT” stage in the development cycle, which is the engineering verification test phase.
