iPhone 5 Will Likely Be 4G; Yet Not Any Faster?

This news caught most people by surprise, mostly because it was under all of our noses this entire time. 9to5Mac reported today that the next iPhone; presumably the iPhone 5, is very likely to be 4G.The report states that AT&T has been calling older 14.4 Mbps HSPA devices as '4G' in their stores and marketing campaigns although 4G was traditionally thought to be reserved for devices that are more than the 14.4 Mbps that they currently are. Technically, smartphones should be performing at a noticeably higher speed to be called 4G, but since smartphones like the HTC Inspire 4G and Motorola Atrix 4G have called themselves '4G', AT&T has gone ahead and changed the definition of what 4G is as a smartphone that carry speeds up 14.4 Mbps (cue Shakespeare's 'what's in a name?' line).

Anyways, the point in all this is that the Qualcomm chips that Apple's iPhones have been using are already within the parameter that would deem them as 4G; so there you have it. At this point it's quote accepted by most industry analysts that Apple will stick with some version of the Qualcomm chip that will let the iPhone 5 also function as a radio.

Whether Apple's iPhone5 will be AT&T's interpretation of 4G or feature 'true 4G power' as we like to call it, is something we won't know until we approach it's release date (even that is up in the air as you probably already know).

Check out previous iPhone 5 news that you might've missed here