Future LTE Handsets, iPhone 5 to Be More Advanced, Power Efficient

Future LTE devices are expected to be far more advanced than the currently existing ones, Tommy Ljunggren, senior vicepPresident of Swedish wireless operator TeliaSonera stated recently.

Speaking to Telecoms.com, he noted that Apple's iPhone 5 will require LTE capabilities to ensure that the company remains competitive on the smartphone market, and also talked a little about the future smartphones packing the technology.

According to him, the smartphones that are currently offering support for the 4G services are not as great as they should be.

However, future devices will be far more advanced, and the next iPhone model should be one of them.

At the moment, LTE smartphones rely on 3G networks to make phone calls, and take advantage of LTE networks only for data transmission.

They might arrive on shelves only with with LTE capabilities in the future, and are also expected to be far more power efficient than today.

The iPhone 5 device will also be among them, and he says that it'd better, otherwise Apple will start losing significant ground on the mobile market.

“I don’t think Apple will decide if LTE will fly or not. My expectation is that in 2013/14 we will really see low-end smartphones having LTE as well,” Tommy Ljunggren stated.

“The big question is what frequency bands they will put in for smartphones. They will be true LTE smartphones – not the ones that the US has right now with two radios.

“These drain the batteries flat very quickly as they have one LTE terminal for data and a CDMA voice terminal. It’s basically a dongle and phone that they glue together. They work – just not for long.”

TeliaSonera does not have LTE smartphones available for its customers, but expects compatible handsets to become available in the beginning of the next year. He said that they will be better LTE devices than the currently available ones.