if you buy a phone and use it till it dies, as we should, your phone shouldn't really be "resellable".
And shutting down stolen phones automatically is good for third world countries where owning anything remotely good means you are a target for criminals.
Why should we do this, exactly? Someone should use it until it dies, but that person shouldn't necessarily be the first owner. Why can I not use the secondary market to both subsidise my upgrades & provide someone with an opportunity to buy a second-hand phone at a discount?
These days there are four different combinations of frequency models out there for each version.
https://www.apple.com/ca/iphone/cellular/
e.g. On the iPhone 14/15 (pro/plus), only US models have: n258 (26 GHz) n260 (39 GHz) n261 (28 GHz) while rest of world models do not have those.
Then just 6 non-US countries have 1500MHz in LTE, but all 15s support it over 5G and satellite. On 14s, 1500MHz has less support.
It's getting like the bad ole days: "oh you need a quad-band phone if you're going from US to Europe or vice versa".
Probably none of this matters unless you're in a fringe area.
I wish they did. I know the networks don't use it but this way they never will. Chicken & Egg...
So... networks are deployed, and handsets are deployed, but mmWave network deployment is always going to be sparse and in places with lots of handsets, they don't all need to be on mmWave, those that are free up other spectrum for other phones, so everyone gets improved service.
[1] https://www.rcrwireless.com/20231019/venues/verizon-mmwave-n...
[2] https://about.att.com/innovationblog/2021/c-band-5G.html
(maybe the answer is europeans go to watch the game...)
I found it interesting that Puerto Rico gets the iphones with mmWave, but USVI and Guam don't.
Also noticed that nonUS/CAN phones don't support 600mhz, and that can make a difference when you have lots of obstructions (e.g. forest/concrete) if you're missing that in US/CAN. Your next available frequency will likely be be 850mhz - doesn't penetrate as well, and could have more traffic/noise on it.
Very interesting for USVI and Guam. I agree 600 mhz seems like a band you want to have... May as well after all the pain to over the air tv broadcasting it caused to get that spectrum. Unfortunately spectrum allocation seems to be in small chunks here and there with little coordination between regulators and then you end up with what we've got: any given handset can't reasonably work on all the bands, so a maker has to pick the bands based on the probable place of use (and sometimes the network, too)
I understand but obviously those on mmWave are getting a really great performance as this is the one area where 5G really provides a major improvement (due to the massive available bandwidth at those frequencies).
What bothers me is that as a European I pay the same for my flagship phone (sometimes even more as Samsung offers high discounts in the US in an attempt to take marketshare from Apple - here in Europe they are already #1) but I miss out on this feature. And often others as well, most of the time European Samsung phones get the far inferior Exynos chipsets whereas US phones get Snapdragon. Especially in heat and battery life these are a great improvement.
And it's not just Samsung. Apple does the same, which means there is almost no incentive for providers to ever start deploying mmWave in these busy areas.
Am I right in assuming you're a regular buyer of Apple devices?