So will these phones ever support CDMA or is that just going to be ignored? I wonder how they're doing in the US specifically considering their phones can't be used on two of the larger carriers in the country.
CDMA is only used in a single country, one where Android is massively underrepresented, and it binds you to a single SoC vendor.
As far as I'm aware, two Chinese carriers, China Mobile and China Telecom, use CDMA. China Telecom I believe for everything, China Mobile for its 3G (4G in general is a bit harder to come by there in my experience, so often the only option for mobile data is 3G).
But the US uses CDMA instead of GSM for audio and SMS content.
The next generation Intel modems will support CDMA https://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2017/02/23/intels-n...
> CDMA is only used in a single country
And only on the legacy 3G networks of 2/4 major carriers at that. Even in the US, CDMA is on its deathbed.
We're already seeing this transition happen in other markets - in Japan, while KDDI is still running their 3G CDMA network, new iPhone models are not being provisioned to connect to it, using solely LTE (thanks to the LTE coverage being superior as they can use the low spectrum freed up by analog TV).
What does LTE-only coverage look like on Verizon? Do you miss out on much if you pop a Verizon SIM in a device without CDMA? And do they support VoLTE?