Japanese blog Macotakara reports that a China Unicom executive apparently confirmed during a presentation at this week’s Macworld Asia that the “iPhone 5” set to be announced next week will indeed support HSPA+ sometimes-called “4G” technology, offering a maximum theoretical data speed of 21 Mbps (up from 7.2Mbps). A slide showing the information was photographed by Japanese site PC Watch.
Japanese IT news site “PC Watch” tells that, Research vice president of China Unicom, Huan Wenliang, told iPhone 5 will support W-CDMA based high-speed data transfer standard HSPA Evolution “HSPA+” (21Mbps) at keynote speech in Macworld Asia 2011.
Claims of the iPhone 5 supporting HSPA+ surfaced earlier this year, with many noting that the move would result in a significant network speed difference between AT&T and Verizon/Sprint customers in the United States.
Qualcomm’s world-mode MDM6600 chip found in the Verizon/CDMA iPhone 4 already supports 14.4 Mbps HSPA+, but the device itself is limited to CDMA networks.
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