The first iteration of LTE will support this. The current issue with LTE is there is no standard for voice calls over it yet. So its data only and you make your call using the other side of the network. Just like how on VZ now the "3G" portion (EVDO) is data only and you still make a voice call over the 1X side.
There are a couple of instances where this sucks for me. I have a Droid X as my personal phone
The worse is when your GF is yammering on and on about whatever and you don't have a data connection to play poke or check the scores or otherwise entertain your brain
Not that I disagree with this being slightly stupid but...
I don;t see a difference between your statement that buying Wintel meant x86 compatible HW and saying Quadroid means buying ARM HW. And if Intel had suddenly switched all its CPUs to some other arch, it still would have been Wintel. Because that meant more than the specifics of the HW.
Just becuase you say Intel doesn't give you an idea of the HW either. Is it 1 core or 8? Does it have hyperthreading... how big is the cache? Blah blah.. some exact thing as "Quadroid".
I would argue that everything you need to know is NOT in the name of the OS. Someone says "Android" and I still dont know what it is. Is its 1.6, or 2.1? Or do I get lucky and get 2.2? Is it a vanilla Google built, or is it HTC or Samsung or Moto screwing with the UI. Do I still get the stock apps, or am I stuck with the HW manufacturers apps?
Then lets add in carrier specific BS. Am I stuck with VZ crap I can't uninstall on top of Moto apps?
I would say better names would be VerMotoid, or HTCdroidmobile, or SamTTroid. The CPU is the least of the issues with android phones at the moment...
I know.. I've simply giving an example of an interesting way Altera lets you customize some of their IP. The Atom has an Intel core and an Altera FPGA... im doing some wishful thinking that maybe you would get some level of access to the CPU like you do with the NIOS.
FPGAs are useful as the actual digital circuits are re programmable. So you could theoretically patch your CPU and change the physical functionality of at least part of it. This would lead to all sorts of nice customizations.
One interesting aspect of the Altera soft CPU (NIOS), is that you can add custom HW directly into the execution unit, basically making your own HW instructions. Then you can generate an assembly instruction for it and use it right from your code. This lets you do nifty things like build a custom piece of HW to implement some arcane computation that is specific to your particular use of the HW and have it built right into the CPU. Wonder if there is this sort of setup here.. that would be pretty nice.
.. the 3G unit is modular in the iPad (unlike a phone's, which is integrated with the radio)...
The 3G module IS a radio. The iPad #G baseband chip is the Infineon X-Gold 608, according to the data sheet it supports HSDPA, WCDMA, and EDGE. This is the same chip that could be used in a phone to make calls.
There is not "probably" about making a CDMA version. You just need a CDMA chipset instead of the X-GOLD 608 and you would need different drivers in iOS to support the different chip. But I would suspect there is a very clean interface in the code that makes this easy. The dialer app isnt making calls directly to the radio or something. Look at how Android's telephony stack is setup. And look at how they have phones on CDMA and UMTS networks... this isn't difficult....
Exactly, its a band aid for now until an EVDO (or maybe LTE?) iPad is ready.
However, I see this bundle as a net win. With a 3G iPad, you get data on your ipad, and thats it. Unless you jailbreak and use it as a hot spot. If you get the MiFi bundle (which is basically the same cost as an ATT 3G ipad) you get a router that you can connect other devices to besides the iPad. So if you have a laptop and an iPad, you are good on both counts.
Futher, this somewhat future proofs your data setup. You can't swap out the chipset in the iPad, so all those ATT 3G owners will be left out when LTE hits. But if you are using a MiFi... just get a 4G mifi and you are in business.
It's easy if you come from a C type of background or have been introduced to those concepts. Someone coming from, say, PHP, or.NET, and have never done any "lower" level programming will find Obj-C much more difficult to grasp. Two examples:
Pointers. Some people just can't this concept. Dereferencing, etc, are most likely alien concepts. Also, header files and the general mechanics of Obj-C/C/C++ are very different from Java/.NET type languages.
I'm an embedded SW engineer, I do a lot of my work in C/C++, so Obj-C wasn't a problem for me. That said, I really don't like Obj-C at all. Its rather annoying. The syntax for function calls, and func definitions is less intuitive than C. Also things like "+" and "-" to differentiate class vs instance methods seems silly.Why not use static like everything else does? And whats the deal with the @property and @synthesize stuff? Not really a fan.
The Fascinate (Samsung) looks pretty good on VZ as well. Ya, there is that stupid Bing problem right now, but there are several ways around it. If you use a custom launcher (like LauncherPro) you can get the Google widget.
Also, rooting is very simple, and you can remove all the Bing crap, plus load custom mods, etc. The screen is quite nice as well, and its super thin. I found the EVO a bit too bit, so the Facinate's slightly smaller screen is a perfect compromise.
That said, rumors keep popping up about VZ's LTE network coming online towards the end of the year. I get my upgrade in Nov, but might hold off and see if any 4G handsets start showing up...
Ya, I think the exclusivity with ATT hurts the market share. Many people don't want to go near ATT, or they are stuck with a huge contract break fee to leave where they are. Or like me, I have a family plan on VZ, but the other two lines just need to be regular non "smart phones", so it would be a huge pain to move all three of us to ATT just so I could get an iPhone.
Also, I think Apple is a bit more polarizing than Google/Android. Some people just don't want to buy apple.
And finally, when you have multiple HW manufacturers and multiple carriers it's seems that it would be easier to get a larger base established.
I don't get the point of this. If you have a cell connection to send SMS, you already have SOME form of data connection. Even on a typical 2G network you can get 60-100kbps data.
Are they trying to make this work on some old school network that no one in the US is using anymore?
On top of that, Verizon had great rural coverage, 3G even in a lot of places.
The only thing I can see that is useful, would be some sort of cleaver phone to phone direct transfer. But then again, if you are already on a data capable network... why??
Purely OFDM can be used without code division. However if you look at the spec for WiMax and LTE it actually uses OFDMA... which is based on CDMA... where you use coding to operate users.
Using code division increases spectral efficiency as well as helping immunity to fading.
I'd suggest two things.... read the 3GPP spec for LTE.... and stop being an anonymous coward if you are so knowledgeable regarding wireless technology.
OFDM is based on CDMA. The point of CDMA is using orthogonal codes to separate users that are all in the same frequency space.
OFDM is an extension of this that offers more features, data throughput, etc. You can easily visualize LTE as many small CDMA channels where users get one or more of these channels during a time interval.
I doesn't much matter what happens outside the air interface, and it has no bearing on the rest of the network. Its all high speed backhaul anyway. You can plug in whatever you want.
Hell I can plug a Verizon femto cell into my Comcast connection and it becomes a small CDMA node. I hardly think you can call this an end to end technology that uses CDMA.
Wrong. All 3G (and beyond) is based on CDMA principles. In fact the 3G that ATT et al use is W-CDMA. There are differences in channel names and chipping rates and such. But at the end of the day anything beyond 2G is all based on CDMA.
"GSM" 2G is TMDA (time division) and just isn't adequate anymore.
LTE is an interesting beast. It uses CDMA but any user can get multiple channels (if available) at a time. The channel allocation is on a time interval.
"GSM" was dead after EDGE. If you are referring to the actual technology that was 2G GSM. However many people now use it interchangeably with UMTS/W-CDMA.. which causes lots of confusion.
Oh, and just to establish my credentials.. I'm a hardware engineer at a major cell phone chip company. I've built CDMA and UMTS base stations.
I meant in a more cooperative sense. If he is working for a provider of services to say, Verizon, then he might be able to at least get access to some VZ tools.
For example, back a while ago I was working with some of the FloTV people (they provide VZ and ATT mobile TV), and we did independent verification of signal and picture quality, but we had help from the network people.
The other problem he would run into without assistance is figuring out where towers are. Most providers don't publicly give out network layout info, channel assignments, blah blah.
I assume that you are not working with a network operator? They have plenty of tools to do drives and plot out signal. Also, chip makers have these tools. I used to work for a large mobile phone chip maker and we had internal test setups that can be driven around in a car to plot signal, etc.
Also, we developed a small device FPGA based device that could be tuned to various channels and recover the "sync" and "paging" channels of a CDMA system. You could do the same for UMTS, EVDO, etc.
If you just wanted raw signal strength, all you really need is dBm for whatever provider and tower you are looking at. You could then compare strength between providers.
However, this isn't really apples to apples. CDMA based systems can literally pick up signal out of horrid conditions and low signal powers... much than, say, a GSM based system. So if you were comparing purely 3G to 3G, that would be valid, but not in the 2G realm.
Just get a phone for each provider, turn on the engineering mode to get the phone's reported dBm reading, and then plot the values as you drive around....
I have worked in the defense industry for a while, and used to work in the "Government" division of a major telecom company.
One project we had worked on was encrypted cell phones for gov use. Our customers were only interested in a solution that was top to bottom US made from cleared companies. The chipset, OS, drivers, etc, were all built in the US, so there was no issue of "back doors"
I also heard rumors at one point about some contractor actually finding mal-ware type SW embedded in the firmware of Lenovo laptops that could sort of call home to momma. I've never seen Lenovo boxes around after that.
I think these issues are going to be bigger than just a single point in the infrastructure chain. With so much cyber activity going on, I think many countries are going to face the same sort of issue India is trying to prevent.
Again your analogies fall short. Last time I checked a turing machine isn't self aware, can't build itself a new server room to live in, and sure as hell can't mate with another turing machine and reproduce.
Perhaps in some simplistic rudimentary fashion a turning machine approximates certain biological functions of a brain, but thats as far as I would be willing to go.
Society is no where near serialized. Do you ever do one thing at a time? Have you ever been in a line with only one teller open, it sucks, so they have 3-4 tellers. Have you seen a major freeway lately? Not so serial. We deal with and balance many things at a time on a daily or hourly basis, its the only way to get anything done.
If my facilitate you mean setting some rational boundaries and laws to allow for fair competition, to regulate certain areas to ensure some company isn't dumbing spent nuclear fuel in my backyard, then we agree.
But the original post was about the govt saying no toys in happy meals. Thats not facilitating anything, thats making choices for the population. Maybe because they think people are too stupid to make them on their own, or maybe because they are addicted to the power they have. Either way its silly.
We are rapidly approaching an Apple App Store society, where the govt is Steve, and they tell us what is good and bad for our devices.... no flash... no happy meal toys... I'd rather take my chances and keep my options open.
Slashdot Mirror
Not true. See here: http://www.bgr.com/2011/01/19/verizons-htc-thunderbolt-will-support-simultaneous-voice-and-data-over-lte/
The first iteration of LTE will support this. The current issue with LTE is there is no standard for voice calls over it yet. So its data only and you make your call using the other side of the network. Just like how on VZ now the "3G" portion (EVDO) is data only and you still make a voice call over the 1X side.
This is happening to me on Chrome (Win or Mac) and Safari....
There are a couple of instances where this sucks for me. I have a Droid X as my personal phone
The worse is when your GF is yammering on and on about whatever and you don't have a data connection to play poke or check the scores or otherwise entertain your brain
Not that I disagree with this being slightly stupid but...
I don;t see a difference between your statement that buying Wintel meant x86 compatible HW and saying Quadroid means buying ARM HW. And if Intel had suddenly switched all its CPUs to some other arch, it still would have been Wintel. Because that meant more than the specifics of the HW.
Just becuase you say Intel doesn't give you an idea of the HW either. Is it 1 core or 8? Does it have hyperthreading... how big is the cache? Blah blah.. some exact thing as "Quadroid".
I would argue that everything you need to know is NOT in the name of the OS. Someone says "Android" and I still dont know what it is. Is its 1.6, or 2.1? Or do I get lucky and get 2.2? Is it a vanilla Google built, or is it HTC or Samsung or Moto screwing with the UI. Do I still get the stock apps, or am I stuck with the HW manufacturers apps?
Then lets add in carrier specific BS. Am I stuck with VZ crap I can't uninstall on top of Moto apps?
I would say better names would be VerMotoid, or HTCdroidmobile, or SamTTroid. The CPU is the least of the issues with android phones at the moment...
I know.. I've simply giving an example of an interesting way Altera lets you customize some of their IP. The Atom has an Intel core and an Altera FPGA... im doing some wishful thinking that maybe you would get some level of access to the CPU like you do with the NIOS.
FPGAs are useful as the actual digital circuits are re programmable. So you could theoretically patch your CPU and change the physical functionality of at least part of it. This would lead to all sorts of nice customizations.
One interesting aspect of the Altera soft CPU (NIOS), is that you can add custom HW directly into the execution unit, basically making your own HW instructions. Then you can generate an assembly instruction for it and use it right from your code. This lets you do nifty things like build a custom piece of HW to implement some arcane computation that is specific to your particular use of the HW and have it built right into the CPU. Wonder if there is this sort of setup here.. that would be pretty nice.
www.altera.com/literature/ug/ug_nios2_custom_instruction.pdf
The 3G module IS a radio. The iPad #G baseband chip is the Infineon X-Gold 608, according to the data sheet it supports HSDPA, WCDMA, and EDGE. This is the same chip that could be used in a phone to make calls.
There is not "probably" about making a CDMA version. You just need a CDMA chipset instead of the X-GOLD 608 and you would need different drivers in iOS to support the different chip. But I would suspect there is a very clean interface in the code that makes this easy. The dialer app isnt making calls directly to the radio or something. Look at how Android's telephony stack is setup. And look at how they have phones on CDMA and UMTS networks... this isn't difficult....
Exactly, its a band aid for now until an EVDO (or maybe LTE?) iPad is ready.
However, I see this bundle as a net win. With a 3G iPad, you get data on your ipad, and thats it. Unless you jailbreak and use it as a hot spot. If you get the MiFi bundle (which is basically the same cost as an ATT 3G ipad) you get a router that you can connect other devices to besides the iPad. So if you have a laptop and an iPad, you are good on both counts.
Futher, this somewhat future proofs your data setup. You can't swap out the chipset in the iPad, so all those ATT 3G owners will be left out when LTE hits. But if you are using a MiFi... just get a 4G mifi and you are in business.
It's easy if you come from a C type of background or have been introduced to those concepts. Someone coming from, say, PHP, or .NET, and have never done any "lower" level programming will find Obj-C much more difficult to grasp. Two examples:
Pointers. Some people just can't this concept. Dereferencing, etc, are most likely alien concepts. Also, header files and the general mechanics of Obj-C/C/C++ are very different from Java/.NET type languages.
I'm an embedded SW engineer, I do a lot of my work in C/C++, so Obj-C wasn't a problem for me. That said, I really don't like Obj-C at all. Its rather annoying. The syntax for function calls, and func definitions is less intuitive than C. Also things like "+" and "-" to differentiate class vs instance methods seems silly.Why not use static like everything else does? And whats the deal with the @property and @synthesize stuff? Not really a fan.
The Fascinate (Samsung) looks pretty good on VZ as well. Ya, there is that stupid Bing problem right now, but there are several ways around it. If you use a custom launcher (like LauncherPro) you can get the Google widget.
Also, rooting is very simple, and you can remove all the Bing crap, plus load custom mods, etc. The screen is quite nice as well, and its super thin. I found the EVO a bit too bit, so the Facinate's slightly smaller screen is a perfect compromise.
That said, rumors keep popping up about VZ's LTE network coming online towards the end of the year. I get my upgrade in Nov, but might hold off and see if any 4G handsets start showing up...
Ya, I think the exclusivity with ATT hurts the market share. Many people don't want to go near ATT, or they are stuck with a huge contract break fee to leave where they are. Or like me, I have a family plan on VZ, but the other two lines just need to be regular non "smart phones", so it would be a huge pain to move all three of us to ATT just so I could get an iPhone.
Also, I think Apple is a bit more polarizing than Google/Android. Some people just don't want to buy apple.
And finally, when you have multiple HW manufacturers and multiple carriers it's seems that it would be easier to get a larger base established.
If you have a "smartphone" then you are required to get a data plan anyway, so this isn't really going to save you any money.
It's not like I could cancel my data plan and use this SMS data on my Droid instead.
For that matter, the unlimited txt options on ATT aren't that cheap either... Maybe $10 a month less than the data plans.
I don't get the point of this. If you have a cell connection to send SMS, you already have SOME form of data connection. Even on a typical 2G network you can get 60-100kbps data. Are they trying to make this work on some old school network that no one in the US is using anymore? On top of that, Verizon had great rural coverage, 3G even in a lot of places. The only thing I can see that is useful, would be some sort of cleaver phone to phone direct transfer. But then again, if you are already on a data capable network... why??
Purely OFDM can be used without code division. However if you look at the spec for WiMax and LTE it actually uses OFDMA... which is based on CDMA... where you use coding to operate users.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal_frequency-division_multiple_access
Using code division increases spectral efficiency as well as helping immunity to fading.
I'd suggest two things.... read the 3GPP spec for LTE.... and stop being an anonymous coward if you are so knowledgeable regarding wireless technology.
Lol... I work for Qualcomm. We invited all this shit. Pretty sure I know what I'm talking about.
Or would you like to compare patents you are on vs patents I'm on in the wireless technology field?
This should have been CDMA2000 and UMTS. Different specs. And actually UMTS is a 2g + 3g package that uses WCDMA for the 3g portion.
So really this should have been CDMA2000 and WCDMA
TDMA is what GSM 2G is based on. Users get a channel for a specific time interval and they are the only user on that channel.
CMDA lets all users transmit simultaneously and are sperated not my *time* (TDMA) but by orthogonal codes (CDMA and beyond). Go look up wash codes.
OFDM is based on CDMA. The point of CDMA is using orthogonal codes to separate users that are all in the same frequency space.
OFDM is an extension of this that offers more features, data throughput, etc. You can easily visualize LTE as many small CDMA channels where users get one or more of these channels during a time interval.
I doesn't much matter what happens outside the air interface, and it has no bearing on the rest of the network. Its all high speed backhaul anyway. You can plug in whatever you want.
Hell I can plug a Verizon femto cell into my Comcast connection and it becomes a small CDMA node. I hardly think you can call this an end to end technology that uses CDMA.
http://www.cdmauniversity.com/cdma/
Some great classes from these guys. If you thought those acronyms were bad.. go look up the channel names in the UMTS spec.
Typo... not "TMDA"... TDMA.
Wrong. All 3G (and beyond) is based on CDMA principles. In fact the 3G that ATT et al use is W-CDMA. There are differences in channel names and chipping rates and such. But at the end of the day anything beyond 2G is all based on CDMA.
"GSM" 2G is TMDA (time division) and just isn't adequate anymore.
LTE is an interesting beast. It uses CDMA but any user can get multiple channels (if available) at a time. The channel allocation is on a time interval.
"GSM" was dead after EDGE. If you are referring to the actual technology that was 2G GSM. However many people now use it interchangeably with UMTS/W-CDMA.. which causes lots of confusion.
Oh, and just to establish my credentials.. I'm a hardware engineer at a major cell phone chip company. I've built CDMA and UMTS base stations.
I meant in a more cooperative sense. If he is working for a provider of services to say, Verizon, then he might be able to at least get access to some VZ tools. For example, back a while ago I was working with some of the FloTV people (they provide VZ and ATT mobile TV), and we did independent verification of signal and picture quality, but we had help from the network people. The other problem he would run into without assistance is figuring out where towers are. Most providers don't publicly give out network layout info, channel assignments, blah blah.
I assume that you are not working with a network operator? They have plenty of tools to do drives and plot out signal. Also, chip makers have these tools. I used to work for a large mobile phone chip maker and we had internal test setups that can be driven around in a car to plot signal, etc. Also, we developed a small device FPGA based device that could be tuned to various channels and recover the "sync" and "paging" channels of a CDMA system. You could do the same for UMTS, EVDO, etc. If you just wanted raw signal strength, all you really need is dBm for whatever provider and tower you are looking at. You could then compare strength between providers. However, this isn't really apples to apples. CDMA based systems can literally pick up signal out of horrid conditions and low signal powers... much than, say, a GSM based system. So if you were comparing purely 3G to 3G, that would be valid, but not in the 2G realm. Just get a phone for each provider, turn on the engineering mode to get the phone's reported dBm reading, and then plot the values as you drive around....
I have worked in the defense industry for a while, and used to work in the "Government" division of a major telecom company.
One project we had worked on was encrypted cell phones for gov use. Our customers were only interested in a solution that was top to bottom US made from cleared companies. The chipset, OS, drivers, etc, were all built in the US, so there was no issue of "back doors"
I also heard rumors at one point about some contractor actually finding mal-ware type SW embedded in the firmware of Lenovo laptops that could sort of call home to momma. I've never seen Lenovo boxes around after that.
I think these issues are going to be bigger than just a single point in the infrastructure chain. With so much cyber activity going on, I think many countries are going to face the same sort of issue India is trying to prevent.
Again your analogies fall short. Last time I checked a turing machine isn't self aware, can't build itself a new server room to live in, and sure as hell can't mate with another turing machine and reproduce.
Perhaps in some simplistic rudimentary fashion a turning machine approximates certain biological functions of a brain, but thats as far as I would be willing to go.
Society is no where near serialized. Do you ever do one thing at a time? Have you ever been in a line with only one teller open, it sucks, so they have 3-4 tellers. Have you seen a major freeway lately? Not so serial. We deal with and balance many things at a time on a daily or hourly basis, its the only way to get anything done. If my facilitate you mean setting some rational boundaries and laws to allow for fair competition, to regulate certain areas to ensure some company isn't dumbing spent nuclear fuel in my backyard, then we agree.
But the original post was about the govt saying no toys in happy meals. Thats not facilitating anything, thats making choices for the population. Maybe because they think people are too stupid to make them on their own, or maybe because they are addicted to the power they have. Either way its silly.
We are rapidly approaching an Apple App Store society, where the govt is Steve, and they tell us what is good and bad for our devices.... no flash... no happy meal toys... I'd rather take my chances and keep my options open.