One of the iPhone 5 features highlighted by Phil Schiller during yesterday's introduction was wideband audio, which offers "crisper word clarity and more natural sounding speech" according to Apple's press release. Schiller noted that the feature requires carrier support and that it would be supported by over 20 carriers on the iPhone 5 at launch, but did not specify which carriers those would be.
Phone Scoop reported late yesterday that Sprint has confirmed it will not support wideband audio (frequently marketed as "HD Voice") on the iPhone 5, and PCMag.com has a good overview of why none of the three major U.S. carriers are likely to support it.
There are three ways to do high-quality, or "wideband" voice calls.
One is to use a new codec, called AMR-WB, over a "3G GSM" (UMTS) network. That's what some European carriers are doing and what's in the iPhone. This is relatively easy to implement on the phone side, provided that the network supports it. In the U.S., only AT&T and T-Mobile would be eligible to do this, and they won't because they're focused on 4G (see below.)
The report goes on to discuss the other two mechanisms for providing HD Voice support, which include a CDMA-related codec being used by Sprint and voice-over-LTE technology being pursued by both AT&T and Verizon, but the iPhone 5 does not support either of those mechanisms.
The result is going to be extremely limited HD Voice experiences in the U.S. for at least a few years. It'll be restricted to calls between limited sets of phones, probably on the same carrier, and it won't be on the iPhone 5.
Beyond wideband audio, Schiller touted several other audio enhancements on the iPhone 5, including a total of three microphones for noise cancelation and accurate voice transcription, a smaller and improved speaker, and a noise-canceling earpiece.
Black Friday sales are continuing today with Best Buy kicking off early Black Friday deals that will last for the next few days. Similar to other retailers, Best Buy's early Black Friday event includes sitewide savings on Apple products, headphones, TVs, monitors, video games, and more.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may...
Monday November 11, 2024 11:28 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple today released firmware updates for both AirPods 4 models (version number 7B20) and the AirPods Pro 2 with both Lightning and USB-C charging cases (version number 7B21). All of these AirPods models were previously on firmware version 7B19.
It is not immediately clear what new features or changes are included in firmware versions 7B20 and 7B21, but we will update this story if we find...
Friday November 8, 2024 7:06 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple has returned to using two 128GB storage chips in the new Mac mini with 256GB of storage, according to a partial teardown video shared on social media today. This means the base-model Mac mini with the M4 chip will not have significantly slower SSD speeds compared to higher-end configurations of the computer with 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB of storage, as multiple NAND chips allows for faster SSD...
Sunday November 10, 2024 12:13 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
In its announcement video for the new Mac mini last month, Apple teased an "upcoming" version of Final Cut Pro for the Mac. Apple will likely announce the update during the annual Final Cut Pro Creative Summit, which begins this Wednesday. The conference is held in association with Apple, and attendees will be visiting Apple Park on the first day.
Apple already teased four new features...
Next year's iPhone 17 "Air" model may not be as thin as Apple planned, according to a rumor originating in Korea.
According to the news aggregator account "yeux1122" on Naver, citing industry sources, Apple has run into problems making the new iPhone 17 model sufficiently thin. The device's reduced thickness is apparently dependent on manufacturing a battery with a thinner substrate, but...
Monday November 4, 2024 12:34 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple today seeded the second betas of upcoming iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 updates to developers, and Apple is continuing to refine the Apple Intelligence capabilities. There are also a handful of smaller features that are worth knowing about.
Find My
Find My has a new option to Share Item Location with an "airline or trusted person" that can help you locate something that you've misplaced....
Thursday November 7, 2024 2:20 pm PST by Juli Clover
Law enforcement officials in Detroit, Michigan are warning other police officers about an alleged iPhone change that causes Apple devices stored for forensic examination to spontaneously restart, reports 404 Media.
iPhones that are undergoing examination have apparently been rebooting, which makes them harder to unlock with brute force methods, and Michigan police think that it's due to a...
Do yourself a big favor and use Skype and you'll see how crappy AT&T/Verizon/Any Cell provider's quality is.
Get a friend with an iPhone. Both download Skype (you'll need usernames, yuck, but whatever). Call your friend on Skype. Talk for at least 5 minutes. Hang up, then call using your carrier (AT&T/Verizon) and you'll see how these horrible the carrier's quality is.
I know AT&T is concerned on making money, but at least make some improvements to the voice network.
more like european carriers are way behind since they don't have LTE yet
You are very misinformed.
European "operators" are actually much in the lead. We still have unlimited data with LTE. A few European countries don't have LTE just yet (although the UK is now rolling it out due to a regulatory hurdle). Countries like Germany, Austria etc have full fledged LTE networks.