What’s Not in the iPhone 4S … And Why
6th October 2011
Apple reckons the iPhone 4S deserves the moniker ‘cos it has a CDMA radio as well as supporting GSM, but it turns out that a 4S will roam only from CDMA onto GSM, not the other way round. So if you’re a European hoping your 4S will work across the USA you’ll be disappointed.
CDMA compatibility needs a secure element as well as a radio – a role fulfilled by the SIM on GSM networks. That can only come from a CDMA operator, so (as the small print reveals) an iPhone 4S can only work on CDMA networks if it was supplied by such a CDMA operator.
Even if you’re an American traveller who bought your phone from Sprint or Verizon (the predominant CDMA operators) you’ll be lucky to get a signal when abroad. The CDMA radio in the 4S doesn’t support the 450MHz band so popular around the Scandinavian countries and across Russia; it’s limited to 800 and 1900MHz, so the majority of CDMA networks will be closed to you even if they had roaming agreements in place.
Pretty lame.