Google Pulls Support For CDMA Devices 272
An anonymous reader writes "Google has just made some interesting changes to their developer pages. As of today, all of the documentation, source code, and firmware images pertaining to CDMA Android devices (including the Verizon Galaxy Nexus) have been removed. A statement from Google explains that the proprietary software required to make these devices fully functional got in the way of Android's open source nature, so CDMA devices are no longer supported as developer hardware. What does this mean for the Galaxy Nexus, which is only available as CDMA in the U.S.?"
Re:Arm Twist Google Style (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:For us non-US folk... (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on, America, at least move onto GSM. ... Take that giant leap into the year 2000.
What are you talking about? GSM has been available in the U.S. since before 2000. It's not our fault some carriers hold onto CDMA. But really, you can't blame them when it worked perfectly well for their purposes. Me, I think a lot of it was to make it more difficult for people to use second-hand phones, since you can't just swap your service from one phone to another on your own like you can GSM.
Re:For us non-US folk... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that East Asian deployments of CDMA2000 use SIM for network authentication - changing phones in Japan, Korea, or India is as simple as moving a little smartcard around. Just like in GSM. Don't hold me to it, but it might also apply to CDMA2000 networks in Eastern Europe.
Only in the Americas do CDMA2000 networks still use MEID for authentication, as far as I know.
Re:For us non-US folk... (Score:5, Insightful)
Only in the Americas do CDMA2000 networks still use MEID for authentication, as far as I know.
So... you're agreeing with me then? Yes, perhaps there are some versions of CDMA that have the flexibility of SIMs, but that's not what the U.S. carriers deployed. That still jives with my idea the choice was entirely deliberate to help carriers maintain control of hardware (and customers) and boost contract re-ups, etc.
It's just another method of creating artificial business barriers in an increasingly small world. Like region encoding DVDs and the U.S. adopting ATSC for HD broadcasting instead of using DVB-T or ISDB.
Re:W-CDMA (UTMS) in Japan (Score:4, Insightful)
"since these phones are typically not subsidized with 2-3 year contacts that covers the full cost of the phone many times over"
The phones aren't subsidized to the consumer. If you come to AT&T with a fully unlocked phone, you get no discount from their monthly rate.
Same is true for Verizon and Sprint.
Re:For us non-US folk... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, US mobile phone companies like Apple, Motorola, RIM, and Palm are just decades behind European mobile phone companies, like Nokia, and... umm...
It's funny how the US takes so much crap for being incompatible, when really, the US is usually the first-mover, and it's the "rest of the world" that decides to develop something intentionally incompatible, for no good reason. Witness ATSC versus DVB.
Oh, and did I mention Vodaphone owns 45% of Verizon Wireless, which is the major CDMA carrier? If CDMA is a liability, then it's a British plot to keep the US down...
Re:For us non-US folk... (Score:5, Insightful)
GSM has a fixed maximum cell size - 20km radius at first, later extended to 35km. CDMA doesn't have a maximum. GSM does because it uses time division multiplexing - several phones can transmit and receive on the same frequency, and they take turns. The further from the tower your phone is, the longer the signal takes to travel back and forth, and there comes a point where your transmissions spill into the next slot, reducing call quality for whoever's using it. If you get to that distance from the tower, it will just drop the call. The maximum cell size is a tradeoff between how much equipment the network needs to serve a given area and how much spectrum it would have to use.
In densely-populated places like most of Europe, the maximum cell size isn't really an issue - there aren't many places where you can leave one settlement and travel 20km without entering another. Australia and North America, on the other hand, are much more spread out, and the number of GSM cells that would be needed to provide acceptable coverage to rural areas would be too expensive for the likely revenue from them.
Re:For us non-US folk... (Score:4, Insightful)
I love ignorant fools opening their mouths. They make asses of themselves and don't even realize it.
You are aware that CDMA is technologically superiour to GSM in EVERY way. In fact, CDMA is most comparable to WCDMA/UMTS, as they're both 3G technologies and WCDMA/UMTS in fact borrowed heavily from CDMA for their air interface. GSM is the most widly deployed network architecture, true, but don't think for a second it's because it's superior. It's because it's cheap. Period.
The USA was the first to roll out 2G, half went with CDMA, half went with GSM. The GSM crowd because it was an international standard, and the CDMA crowd because it was far superior to GSM, and cost wasn't that different because GSM had yet to have wide spread deployment to drive cost down. As time went on though, since CDMA is heavily patented by Qualcomm, it meant the price stayed high when the rest of the world started rolling out their networks, so they went with the cheaper GSM.
I also have a theory that part of GSMs adoption in europe is due to a very "europe first" mentality, and due to strong american ties to CDMA, they didn't want to go that way, but again, just a theory on my part, and the cost probably was the bigger motivator.
Lastly, CDMA as deployed in the USA is a 3G technology, why ditch it for a 2G network? At least tell us to ditch it and go with UMTS. Oh, and the US also has every one of those technologies deployed. AT&T and T-Mobile are GSM/UMTS networks, Verizon and Sprint are CDMA networks. And everybody seems to be heading to LTE for 4G networks.
-A cellular network R&D engineer.
Re:For us non-US folk... (Score:4, Insightful)
Can someone explain why CDMA inherently forbids SIM cards or an analogous device that lets you move your account over to any old compatible phone without the telecom getting involved?
I'm looking for a technical reason, not "money money money".
Re:For us non-US folk... (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't forbid it, as I recall. It makes it optional and virtually every carrier opted not to as it gives them more control over the handsets.