Apple confirms LTE iPhone is at least one generation away

I've been holding onto my old iPhone 3G for over three years as I wait for an LTE based phone. I'm tired of waiting. LTE and WiMax are both readily available in my area (Dallas/Ft Worth) and I've been impressed with the performance I've seen on my neighbors HTC EVO 4G perform and very impressive speeds and I would love to see that on the iPhone/iPad.

I'm not saying I'm moving on to Android, but now I'm going to start thinking about it.

Here's how I see it:

Apple will release one iPhone model next (call it the iPhone 5) that will work with either network (GSM or CDMA) but still run on 3G/EVDO. There are issues right now with the LTE phones consuming battery power (Moto's Bionic). You think the iPhone had issues prior to draining battery with BT on, location services and Push, throw in LTE and your battery runtime is half.

Apple will then release (12months or so later) the 6th generation with LTE, GSM and CDMA (I would hope Verizon would wake up and ditch the poor-voice quality CDMA for GSM...but no...why improve old technology).

Apple needs to improve the display, the size of it, make it a wee bit lighter, add better camera (CMOS 12Meg) and longer battery life.

I figured iPhone 5 wasn't going to be LTE, which is one reason why I wasn't afraid to go ahead and switch to Verizon for iPhone 4 now. The rumors are suggesting that iPhone 5 is only going to have modest hardware upgrades and with Verizon's 20 month upgrade eligibility, it will put me in position to buy iPhone 6 in November 2012 which is much more likely to have LTE. Besides, I'm not supposed to get LTE in my area until this fall at the earliest.

This doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Apple's ethos is to feel out new technoliges before jumping on them. LTE is one of those technoligies. I am happy to not have to pay a higher service fee for inferior and spotty service from AT&T so I am perfectly ok with the delay. I'm not interested in paying higher fees for shoddy 4G data service.

Dear Writer,
You do realize that the current iPhone 4 already supports the HSPA+ (which T-mobile says is 4G). AT&T already has HSPA+ service in Charlotte, so I already get average download speeds of 5.0+ Mbps on a real-world basis. I've even creeped up to the 8Mbps in certain areas and times of day. I can live with these speeds for another year until the LTE technology is better and doesn't kill a phones battery in just a few hours.

So the Verizon iPhone 5 will still not be able to do voice and data at the same time?

Another thing that's sloppy is the composition of the image - the fake glare can't be as shown on both units.

1) Was I the only one that heard De Vega say At&t would have a HSPA+ iPhone this year. Need to find that clip I think is was on CNN

2) So No LTE wouldn't that mean iPhone 5 has no real reason to be held off till September ?

I think the reasoning is sound.

The iPhone 5 has been under design since (or before) the iPhone 4 came out. If the hardware isn't available now then it's not going to go in to an iPhone without at least 6-9 testing.

Apple probably have 4G LTE devices in prototype form that they're not happy with yet.

Steve Jobs also claimed that Apple had no interest in tablets before the iPad came out...Not saying the iPhone's going 4G, I don't think it is yet, but you never really know with Apple, do you?