Tuesday, May 24, 2016

One - GSM or LTE?




One is a new flagship device from for 2013. With no doubts it is a grt device with top hardware and innovating software. I will make a review of One soon, so expect a lot of pictures and in-depth comparison of Sense 4+ and brand new Sense 5.
For now some of you might be wondering about possible variants of this device. I made some resrch and I think I know how would this work. It is not officially confirmed, however I believe it is quite reliable and trustworthy.Apart of all carriers branded models (also U.S. AT&T, U.S. Verizon and U.S. Sprint), there will be GSM andGSM + LTE variants available for most countries. Respectively M7_U for GSM and M7_UL for LTE. Now the question is - when new update will come for U, will it come for UL the same day, or maybe week later? I can't answer that, but I hope both variants will be updated at the same time.First off all, looking at One software, it's sy to spot that both U and UL variants have the same -name "m7". Model ID (MID) will be probably slightly different. LTE variant has PN0710000, while GSM should have something like PN0711000 or PN0710001. The beginning of the will be the same for all One variants - PN07.
Now, let's assume we spk about Europn version (to avoid confusion with different CIDs or MIDs). It is said that Snapdragon 600 ( One SoC) has LTE modem alrdy integrated (just like S4 and S4 Pro). So logically, there shouldn't be 2 different variants of S600 (with or without LTE). And so I believe that. This mns that GSM variant of One will have LTE modem as well, but most probably it will be disabled. Is it possible to disable LTE modem? Sure. The fact that specific SoC has LTE modem doesn't mn it's activated.
Will it be possible to activate LTE radio in GSM model? I'm not sure yet, but I think it would. How? You'll need S-OFF device, that's obvious. Since both GSM and LTE models will have the same hardware, having S-OFF you should be able to flash M7_UL software (RUU.exe). Of course you'll have to modify your Model ID (MID) in fastboot before (fastboot oem writemid PN0710000). Is there a risk to totally brick your device? Yes! So don't try it before it is confirmed to be working.
To find any official confirmation of my resrch I visited Qualcomm site and went to the specifiion page of new Snapdragons 200, 400, 600 and 800 chipsets. Here is the picture of S600 ftures:
As you can see, LTE modem is indeed integrated, and so will be present in GSM models as well. Here I rept again - it will be disabled on GSM units and it won't be possible to switch it on/off in settings just like that. Enabling LTE on such units will be either not possible at all, or it will be possible by flashing M7_UL RUU to S-OFF device. Why this does not apply to One X and its LTE brother, One XL? Because One X is based on quad-core nVidia Tegra 3, while One XL is powered by dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4. Yes, both are running different SoCs, because Tegra 3 doesn't have LTE modem integrated.
How to recognize if One is GSM or LTE version? Looking back at some devices like One SV (C525u) you could noticed "4G LTE" text on the back cover. I wouldn't expect similar text this time, because the back case is not removable.
Do you alrdy own LTE version of One? Consider flashing my custom ROM from this site.
Have any questions or comments? Feel free to share!Also, if you like this article, plse use media sharing buttons (Twitter, G+, Facebook) down this post!


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