Over at iFixit.com, they make a habit of taking new products, dismantling them and seeing what makes them tick. It didn’t take the technicians long before they had their hands on a Verizon iPhone 4.
The teardown revealed a lot of interesting differences between that and the GSM model. The vibrator motor was a different design, the battery weighed less, the case mounted differently, but more interestingly, the CDMA chipset had a little trick up its sleeve.
The dismantling revealed the the ViPhone 4 has a chipset compatible with both CDMA and GSM networks. Not only that, but it can also support HSPA+ up to 14.4Mbps. However, due to a lack of a SIM tray, basebands, and correct firmware the Verizon iPhone itself is not a true world-phone.
What’s most interesting to me is that this supplies more information about what the near future of iPhones could hold. If these world-phone ready chips are already in use by Apple, there’s no reason why the iPhone 5 couldn’t have one built in as standard.
This means that the iPhone 5 on Verizon would be exactly the same as that on AT&T. On a larger scale, the device could be useable on almost any carrier in the world, CDMA or GSM.
