Verizon iPhone 4 teardown reveals CDMA+GSM Qualcomm chip

[harman03]

Folks over at iFixit have taken the latest iPhone apart and found that the phone includes a Qualcomm MDM6600 chip, which supports high-speed HSPA and CDMA frequencies and is the same chipset used in the Droid Pro world phone.
Here are some of the interesting details from iFixit and iFixyouri’s Verizon iPhone 4′s teardown:

• Verizon iPhone comes with a Qualcomm “Gobi” MDM6600 wireless chip, which supports both GSM and CDMA. The Qualcomm MDM6600 chip supports HSPA+ data rates of up to 14.4 Mbps as well as CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev. A/Rev. B.
• The location and design of the RF components such as EMI (electromagnetic interference) shields, connector locations including board layout has been changed compared to the GSM iPhone 4.
• Apple has redesigned the vibrator and has moved it to the bottom left corner instead of top right section of the phone.

This more or less means that the Verizon iPhone could possibly support both GSM and CDMA, and it’s an interesting discovery as previously rumors mentioned that Apple might have been planning to develop a single iPhone that could be configured to support CDMA or GSM.
It’s not clear why Apple did not launch a single model supporting both GSM and CDMA networks. iFixit’s CEO Kyle Wiens speculates:

It may be that it was easier to design antennas for a CDMA-only phone—this phone supports two cellular frequency bands, while Apple supports five bands in the GSM version. But this is a sign that Apple may be considering unifying the CDMA and GSM iPhones in the future.
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You can check out the full teardown pictures and continue to speculate what is the deal behind the lack of GSM support on the Verizon iPhone.