T-Mobile users have not had an easy time when it comes to the iPhone. Users migrating over with unlocked handset have to suffer through EDGE speeds, and after it was starting to look like the carrier might join Sprint as new inductees to the official iPhone club last year, things didn’t pan-out for T-Mobile. Earlier this week, CTO Neville Ray made some comments about his knowledge of Apple’s plans for the next iPhone, which would supposedly have the hardware needed for T-Mobile support, should Apple choose to work with the carrier. T-Mobile has now issued a follow-up statement in which it denies having any such knowledge.
T-Mobile explains that Ray’s comments were misconstrued, and what he said about support for T-Mobile 3G frequencies was in regards to the general state of chipsets available to manufacturers not anything specific to Apple and the next iPhone.
While the original CNET article has since been edited to reflect T-Mobile’s current position, we dug up a clean copy to see exactly what was said. CNET first reported, “Ray said he has seen the roadmap of chipsets that Apple plans to use, and knows it has that capability. But he noted Apple could choose to ignore that capability and not strike a deal with T-Mobile.” We’d be curious to see the interview transcript that led to Ray’s statement being described as such, because it sounded pretty unambiguous as originally told.
On one hand, maybe CNET really just misunderstood what Ray was saying. On the other hand, could T-Mobile possibly be back-pedaling to avoid the wrath of Apple? We certainly know Apple to be notoriously private, and to take leaks very seriously. In either case, it’s odd that it took T-Mobile three days between the initial reporting on Ray’s comments and following-up with this new statement. For the moment, at least, we suppose we should give the carrier the benefit of the doubt, and keep in mind that even this revised tale doesn’t preclude the possibility of the next iPhone coming to T-Mobile, after all.
Source: T-Mobile
Via: Phone Scoop
