Thoughts on an LTE iPhone

Nearly every Android phone has terrible battery life, doesn't matter if its single core, dual core, 3G or 4G so using them as a benchmark is not a good idea. Second all of the Verizon 4G devices have use both a CDMA chip and an LTE chip which means a bigger battery draw. The LTE chips coming out in the next year will integrate all of that into a single chip which means better battery life. Essentially what I'm saying is don't use current 2011 technology to gauge what a future 2012 device will be like.

Really you guys have no clue. First off a lot of my devices are apple mbp (7), mac mini (3) & ipads (yes more than 5). I do however have some none apple products like 2 windows 7 desktops and my phone which was the htc thunderbolt (now it is the nexus). 3g vs 4g hands down 4g. I am not talking about att pseudo 4g. I am talking verizon lte. 3g is like dial up compared to 4g real broadband. As for the battery well i carry around 1 extra battery and it gets me easily 36 hrs with both batteries. The battery is not that big (about the size of a credit card). Anyway i already see several people with their 4s and they have that silly looking extra battery pack docked on. Personally i would rather keep the device sleek and slim with the removeable battery then have to add a funny designed device piggy backed onto my phone.

Would be great for tethering! - I could have 3g when I am out and about, and 4G when my phone is my internet!

Why hasn't Apple invested money/time/energy into new battery technology? It would befit Apple to come out with some awesome new proprietary long-lasting battery tech for all portable devices (Macbooks included) that could beat the pants off any competitor and they own it, patents and all. And with super smooth integration into their OS and hardware, it would have that much more of an advantage. Why not?

You can 4G off and on any time you choose on an Android phone. The iPhone could do the exact same. If you choose need speed, you can have it on for just as long as you need it. Never understood why this was so complicated

There is no question that apple will only do the right thing at the right time. Meanwhile, LTE phone purchasers are victims of fraud as their devices are next to unusable for that intended use. There's a sucker born ever minute in the jAndroid world.

I think they should vary the type of connection used based on the average transmission speed being used. In other words, if streaming a Netflix movie CAN be done over 3G, there's no reason to use 4G. Basically if they are peaking out the 3G speeds, switch to 4G. If only using 250kbps on 4G, downstep it to 3G. Even if there are server constraints causing slow speeds, this would work. It could be done in hardware.

At the VERY least, they could downstep to 3G when the battery reached, say, 40% or so. That way if we're on an external power source we'd always get 4G speeds but it wouldn't drain the battery all the way to dead.

In short, I want an LTE iPhone. I know the battery drain will be more than 3G, and as long as I have some options to control it I'm ready to make that jump before batteries are necessarily ready for it. I also have my iPhone 4s plugged in a lot of the time while I'm driving anyway because the GPS drains the battery excessively anyway.

I will switch to Verizon from AT&T when 2 things happen:

1. They offer an LTE iPhone with the ability to do voice and data at the same time
2. They offer a data plan with more than a 4GB/month cap that costs about the same as what they offer now. 4GB is a reasonable cap for 3G but it's not for 4G. They're kind of missing the whole point. Something around 50-100GB is more realistic for LTE speeds (you could go through 4GB in literally a day of Netflix HD).

someone like juggernax3 probably has an android based phone or windows phone with a battery life of 5hrs. I have had everything from EVO 4G to Tmobile MyTouch to everything else in between. I worked for T-Mobile and can tell you for a fact that even with some "battery issues" an iPhone will outlast any android device out there as far as battery life goes. I had to switch back to an iPhone almost solely based on that fact, not to mention it's an amazing mp3 player, web browser and the thousands of relevant apps (not all that crap you find on the android market). And no im not a fanboy, I have tried android and it just sucks (heard great things about Galaxy S II, but again crappy battery life). iPhones are popular because they just simply work, duh.

Certainly the market is ripe for fossil fuel cells that will bring us the 7-day charge time that we expect.

Otoh, there's only one datapoint of bad 4G power consumption, on Verizon. What about other 4G carriers?

2nd generation chipsets coming out in Q2 2012 means the iPhone 5 won't have LTE - that's too late even for an October launch.