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.
Thursday October 31, 2024 9:42 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple is set to release iOS 18.2 in December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. There are a handful of new non-AI related feature controls incoming as well.
...
We're officially in the month of Black Friday, which will take place on Friday, November 29 in 2024. As always, this will be the best time of the year to shop for great deals, including popular Apple products like AirPods, iPad, Apple Watch, and more.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment,...
Thursday October 31, 2024 7:06 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
The first Geekbench 6 benchmark results for the M4 Pro chip surfaced today. Impressively, the results that are available so far show that the highest-end M4 Pro chip is faster than the highest-end M2 Ultra chip in terms of peak multi-core CPU performance.
Here is a comparison of the results:
Mac mini with M4 Pro (14-core CPU): 22,094 multi-core score (average of 11 results)
Mac Studio...
Friday November 1, 2024 4:04 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
The iPhone SE 4 that's set to come out early next year is expected to debut Apple's first in-house 5G modem, according to Jeff Pu, an analyst who covers companies within Apple's supply chain.
In a research note this week with Hong Kong-based investment firm Haitong International Securities, Pu said Apple is expected to roll out its custom-made 5G modem starting with the next-generation...
Monday November 4, 2024 10:54 am PST by Juli Clover
With the second beta of iOS 18.2 that's available for developers today, Apple has further fleshed out the ChatGPT integration that's available with Siri. In the Settings app, there's now a section that shows the ChatGPT daily limit, and offers an option to upgrade to the paid ChatGPT Plus plan.
The beta includes an Advanced Capabilities section with a "Daily Limit" reading that shows up as...
Friday November 1, 2024 8:04 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple's new M4 Pro and M4 Max chips are impressively fast in terms of CPU performance, topping the M2 Ultra, but what about graphics performance?
The first Geekbench 6 results for GPU performance are now available for the M4 Pro and M4 Max, and the Metal scores reveal some impressive year-over-year gains. Based on the Metal scores that are available so far, the M4 Pro and M4 Max are up to...
Friday November 1, 2024 9:40 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
After a busy October in which Apple announced new Macs and Apple Intelligence launched, the calendar has now turned to November. Below, we outline what to expect from Apple this month as the slower-but-still-busy holiday season approaches.
After seeding the first betas of iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2 with additional Apple Intelligence features last month, Apple will likely...
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.
