LTE and portability...

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Linuxluver

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#138090 19-Dec-2013 15:42

I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 that I bought via Telecom in May. I took it to Canada and the LTE on Bell Canada (I have a Bell SIM) worked great. It now works just great here in Auckland, too.

I will soon be receiving a Nexus 5 for Xmas.....a complete surprise, honest....and it does LTE, too. I do not expect any problems.

But in the Android Forum, one poster suggested that LTE phones from the Google Play Store (devices branch) would not work in NZ.

Is this person incorrect? Are there grey areas? Or will LTE 'just work'™ ?

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ajobbins

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#954932 19-Dec-2013 15:45

If the US Play Store it will be the US bands, any of the Play Store's outside of North America should be the right LTE bands for NZ

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johnr

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#954935 19-Dec-2013 15:53

Nexus5 is best purchased from Google AU store if you get the US version no 4G / LTE

wellygary

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#954940 19-Dec-2013 16:09

Global LTE is a hideous mess, and will probably get worse (once operators get into the old UHF TV spectrum) before it gets better...

knoydart

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#955004 19-Dec-2013 17:58

Actually the 1800 MHz band (band 3) is turning into a almost world wide band for Lte deployment. The 700 MHz band that NZ is using (band 28) is looking like a decent deployment, so far countries with a total population of about 3.3 billion have indicated their plans for band 28 so we should be good with device availability in years to come

sbiddle

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#955052 19-Dec-2013 19:47

If you want a LTE device do not buy it from North America. A large majority of devices sold there are severely crippled band wise.

johnr

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#955062 19-Dec-2013 19:57

Also the 2600Mhz band

Linuxluver

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#955138 19-Dec-2013 21:43

sbiddle: If you want a LTE device do not buy it from North America. A large majority of devices sold there are severely crippled band wise.

It was bought via a local parallel importer....so it should be OK. They won't want yo-yo phones bouncing back the day after they were purchased.

But at least I now have some idea of what to avoid.

It's also interesting that my NZ-purchased SGS4 worked fine on LTE in Toronto and Ottawa

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sbiddle

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#955239 20-Dec-2013 07:46

Linuxluver:
sbiddle: If you want a LTE device do not buy it from North America. A large majority of devices sold there are severely crippled band wise.

It was bought via a local parallel importer....so it should be OK. They won't want yo-yo phones bouncing back the day after they were purchased.

But at least I now have some idea of what to avoid.

It's also interesting that my NZ-purchased SGS4 worked fine on LTE in Toronto and Ottawa

Canada uses the AWS band for LTE, as do some US networks. Most phones support this band.

While it's not a hard and fast rule the on many existing and current US market LTE devices the only band support is includes 700Mhz A or B band LTE (not the US had two bands with very few devices that can do both) and also AWS support for 1700Mhz/2100Mhz. They do not support the 1800Mhz or 2600Mhz bands as these are not used in North America.

Many non US devices lack the 700Mhz support but include AWS, 1800 and 2600. Building multi band LTE devices is still very challenging from an RF perspective, and what Apple did with the iPhone5S was quite groundbreaking.