lol.  good one.

Thanks for the levity.

sailboat

Sailboat,

In that case, I have an entire load of very expensive memory chips to sell you called Nevada.  Basically just organized sand right? :)

seven

Yeah, I kind of knew that was the answer. 

I would say "cheesy" is a kind of mild term for what I think of this marketing tactic. 

say, I think I will rename my F350 to be a ferrari.  After all it has a bigger engine and more horsepower.... so why not!  

prancing ponies indeed.

sailboat 

Apple has simply changed the icon on the phone to reflect AT&T's marketing of its HSPA+ service as 4G. Technically they can do this because the ITU relaxed its rules on what it counts as 4G. It used to say that LTE-Advanced was the fourth generation wireless specification but then said that LTE, WiMax and HSPA+ (which used to be called 3G) all counted.

But yeah, its kind of cheesy marketing. Look for some articles on what 4G is -- and isn't -- soon.

It's none of the above, I'm afraid, but just new marketing lingo from AT&T. With Apple's iOS 5.1 upgrade for the phone, it changed the icon to 4G on AT&T's iPhones (but not Verizon's). AT&T's logic is that it's an HSPA+ phone, and that's how they market their other phones on that network. So, nothing is new with the phone besides that label.

well, this was not a perfect rollout.

I went to the local apple store to get a new iPhone 4Gs and a new LTE iPad.  

got home, fired up the iPhone, and wow!....!.....! it says 4G right there in the signal bar in the upper left corner.  Where it usually says "3G" or "E" for AT&T Edge network.... right beside the RF signal strength bars.  4G!  Now I know Apple has not yet released the 4G iPhone.  so what gives? 

A) did I get a phone that slipped through the QC ranks and should not have been released?

B) did I get a set of software that starts to preview the upcoming 4G iphone that Apple has not yet announced and won't even comment on "if" they are doing one and when?  Did some early code leak out?

c) for both A & B above, does AT&T have more 4G up and running than has been announced?  I am sure I am NOT in teh current 4G coverage area for AT&T.  Far from it in fact.  So I "know" there is no 4G signal here for ATT yet.  

or....

D) is this a somewhat flawed launch that has iPhones showing 4G icons by mistake when in fact there is no 4G signal, and the iphone that supports 4G has not been released.  Somehow the software in IOS 5.1 which supports both the iPad with LTE and the iPhone without LTE has a bug that allows my iPhone to show 4G service and 4G 3-4 "bars" in the signal strength meter, when in fact there is no 4G signal here at all and no 4G iphone.

my guess is "D"... flawed software launch that has the iphone showing an incorrect icon when it fact it means to show "3G".

watch for an IOS patch to come soon.

sailboat