Re: Apple accused of deliberately slowing older products to persuade people to buy ne
there are 4 new cellular modem choices that both the 8 and x offer: models a1863 and a1864 rf chipsets with fdd-lte, td-lte, td-scdma (china mobile specific), cdma evdo, umts/hspa+/dc-hsdpa, and gsm/edge capabilities vs. models a1905 and a1897 rf chipsets with fdd-lte, td-lte, umts/hspa+/dc-hsdpa, and gsm/edge capabilities. models without the td-scdma and cdma options are using rf chipsets mainly from intel and those with td-scdma and cdma are using rf chipsets primarily from qualcomm. as intel chipsets are a little behind the curve, i would recommend models with the more advanced and powderful qualcomm chipsets. this is because the qcom chipsets are already at the latest category of 3gpp standards and can support gigabit lte while the intel chipsets are behind in keeping up with latest 3gpp standards. to normalize or equalize offerings among its many models in order to keep apples for apples (no pun intended) performance comparison among these models, apple will use software to mitigate or suppress the higher performance characteristics of qcom models. when intel modems catch up to qcom modems (and require hardware changes in future iphone models), software patches will occur on qcom models to unleash their full potential. if you travel to china, japan, sk, north and south america a lot and wishes to use the “true global” iphone, go for new iphones with rf modem models a1863 and a1864. for tiong syndicates and scalpers who buy new iphones in the u.s. early and try to resell them in china with the wrong models, they will have a rude awakening when buyers realize these iphones cannot roam with china mobile on td-scdma (it can still roam on gsm, edge, umts, hspa, and lte).