Thursday, October 10, 2013

Talking and Surfing Same Time Yet? The Verizon iPhone 5s and 5c

Most of us have taken a peak at the exterior and reviewed major specs for Apple’s two latest phones. If you are a Verizon Wireless customer there is one technical detail you may have missed. The new Apple phones are still not supporting SVLTE and SVDO. What’s SVLTE and SVDO? Here’s some details on these two protocols / technical standards:

Simultaneous Voice and LTE (Long Term Evolution)
Referred to as SVLTE, allows a mobile phone to use both voice and data networks at the same time – specifically when the voice network is CDMA 1xRTT (what Verizon uses) and the data network is LTE (what providers are calling 4G. By not using SVLTE, Verizon’s 4G data network is not available while on a voice call.
Simultaneous Voice and Data Only
Referred to as SVDO, this is the older standard for 3G networks. If you have an iPhone 4 or older, you have a 3G phone. Later iPhone (5 and on) have both a 4G and 3G radio and the device will fall back to 3G-mode when not in 4G coverage areas.  Similar to SVLTE, when the voice network is CDMA 1xRTT and the data network is CDMA 3G (also referred to as CDMA 1xEV-DO) the data network is not available while on a voice call.
Is this significant? Yes and No. The lack of SVLTE should not matter once VoLTE (Voice over LTE) launches on a large scale, allowing both voice and data to operate seamlessly on one Verizon Wireless 4G network.

What’s really interesting is Verizon Wireless has required their handset manufacturers to support both of these technical standards – that is - all manufactures except Apple.

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