Boy Genius Report is reporting that Apple and carriers have already begun testing 4G LTE iPhones on networks across the globe. We’re not completely surprised by the move. It seems pretty inevitable to us, but up until this point there was no evidence outside of rumors that LTE would be moved into the iPhone.
The team over at Boy Genius Report has obtained some screenshots of internal iOS test builds, a .plist file to be exact, that clearly indicates that LTE is definitely on the docket moving forward.
It’s important news, but it certainly doesn’t mean that the next iPhone will have LTE, nor is it an admission that any phone in the near future from Apple will have the technology. Electronics companies test hardware configurations that both make it to market and do not make it to market. In fact, we’d be surprised if Apple wasn’t testing LTE at this point.
LTE is likely a large part of the future, and given that Apple’s pretty heavily invested in mobile handhelds, ignoring LTE would be a huge blunder. Even if Apple had no plans on including LTE in the iPhone, there’s a very good chance that they would be testing it, at least internally.
Some clarifications
Recent reports have shown that a large number of the populace (34%) believe that they already own a 4G iPhone. So we wanted to go on the record here and point out that the iPhone 4 is not 4G, despite the common belief. Apple has yet to release a 4G phone. The iPhone 4 currently runs on the 3G baseband. It gets confusing because Apple’s naming convention went iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4.
Trust us. You don’t have a 4G iPhone. Heck, chances are you don’t even live in an area that has support for 4G yet.
Source: Boy Genius Report
Note: Header image is a concept, not an actual iPhone 5
