) for 2,4,6...10 or more years even.
If it's just your opinion then I wish you'd get out of my head.
The lack of LTE made no sense for about 10 seconds. Then I thought about how many implementations of LTE are out there, and how badly fragmented the current LTE market is, and the fact that a Nexus phone should be "one phone to rule them all" with the carriers keeping their damned dirty hands out of MY phone's firmware, and it made perfect sense. LTE and Nexus are simply incompatible in LTE's current form and footprint. Google would have to choose a carrier, and that locks the phone to that carrier for LTE and makes the LTE radio an expensive and useless appendix for anyone using any other carrier.
It will probably be a very different picture 2-3 years from now when LTE coverage expands for all carriers. It's certainly a very different picture right now for any phone manufacturer wanting to make a carrier-specific phone. But right now, for a non-carrier-locked phone, LTE doesn't seem very useful.
Joshua mentioned the lack of LTE on the iPhone 4S several times in The Verge's review. One example is in the conclusion: "The lack of LTE, a larger display, or a new design may put off some buyers, but that won't change the fact that the 4S is a force to be reckoned with." Also, under the "Bad Stuff" heading was the following bullet point: "Improved 3G speeds don?t seem very improved, especially compared to LTE devices". Now perhaps that's not as much slamming as you'd like, but LTE coverage was more limited a year ago anyway. A year later with a growth in coverage availability, and a flagship phone without LTE is somewhat more of a headscratcher. HSAT, I live in an area where AT&T doesn't offer LTE and probably won't for a few years. The lack of LTE on the Nexus 4 is not a big deal to me at all.
I like The Verge, I really do. I think they bring a unique blog to the table and that it asks certain questions that other mainstream tech blogs couldn't care less about. Features like "The Classics" are very refreshing and welcomed. However, let's not forget who is at the helm of The Verge, and why the psychological irony of Utopian situations and Utopian product hyperbole comes together so well there. J Tops, will never - even if it baked pizza, say that Android or an Android device has surpassed iOS or any Apple product. He will begrudgingly say "almost, if not as good as something like...[pssssh, I dunno!] the iPhone," but never "better than." So understanding that leads me to the conclusion, that like any good Fanboy, whenever an awesome product launches from a competitors stable a dissonance takes over that causes these fanatics to start looking for any excuse to say "well, it falls way to short here and here and there."
But let's be real. VZW is overpriced. Everyone else's LTE has a negligible footprint. Hell, there are places where Sprint has launched and now claims "coverage" where only two blocks are receiving signal (per forum complaints - in KC I believe). HSPA+ is, in my estimation the most harmonious balance between great speeds (especially for a smartphone, I mean c'mon) coverage, battery life and availability. Plus it cuts those two year strings that some of us have been tethered too (don't let them find out
If you want to embrace what Nexus is, what it can mean for our wireless future, the absence of LTE is a "that's odd" moment, until you really consider it. Aren't the LTE standards in the US really just setting us all up another decade of carrier exclusivity, and regional monopolization? Which network has an LTE frequency that is compatible with another? It's the CDMA/GSM bumblecluster all over again. And it's pretty damned anti-consumer at it's core.
But that's me, and I'm a me fanboy, so ... haha, ya know it's just like my opinion man.
If it's just your opinion then I wish you'd get out of my head.
The lack of LTE made no sense for about 10 seconds. Then I thought about how many implementations of LTE are out there, and how badly fragmented the current LTE market is, and the fact that a Nexus phone should be "one phone to rule them all" with the carriers keeping their damned dirty hands out of MY phone's firmware, and it made perfect sense. LTE and Nexus are simply incompatible in LTE's current form and footprint. Google would have to choose a carrier, and that locks the phone to that carrier for LTE and makes the LTE radio an expensive and useless appendix for anyone using any other carrier.
It will probably be a very different picture 2-3 years from now when LTE coverage expands for all carriers. It's certainly a very different picture right now for any phone manufacturer wanting to make a carrier-specific phone. But right now, for a non-carrier-locked phone, LTE doesn't seem very useful.
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