GSM verses CDMA Cell Phones
Lately I’ve been playing with various cell phones and the technologies that make them work like CDMA and GSM.
I’ve also been checking into which cell phone carriers provide the various services.
Why have I been looking into this type of stuff?
Because I’m looking into changing my phone and possibly my cell phone coverage provider to what will give me the most freedom and expandability for other things down the road.
After a few hours of research, here’s what I’ve found.
Sprint and Verizon are CDMA providers, which I already knew, Nextel is a TDMA provider.
Now that Nextel is partnered with Sprint, I guess they’re also now CDMA.
Cingular and T-Mobile are the only GSM providers I’ve found in the USA but I’m sure they’re more, so if you know some, let me know in the comments.
Something interesting about Sprint is back in the late 1990’s they actually had some GSM coverage but converted that network to CDMA, then sold the GSM infrastructure in 1999 to Omnipoint which eventually became part of T-Mobile USA.
The end result: I needed a Quad Band GSM phone which will work on 850/900/1800/1900 networks to have the most freedom allowing it to be compatible on GSM networks in most North American, European and Asian GSM markets, providing the phone is unlocked.
Thanks to a few of my connections in the cell phone industry, I was able to get a brand new Motorola SLVR L7 as seen in the stock photo with my post.
When I first received my Motorola SLVR L7, it was locked to Cingular but after a little minor hacking, it’s now unlocked and I can use it on any GSM provider that I have a SIM card for. w00t.
All I need now is to find out how to remove all the Cingular branding (splash screens, etc.) so it will just have the stock Motorola features and screens which were removed when Cingular branded the phone.
I did find some online tutorials for this but they’re for non North America phones.
This isn’t a major issue because the phone will work in other areas now that it’s unlocked but I would like a way to turn off things like Bluetooth and the GPS system.
If you have some suggestions on this and don’t want to comment, feel free to contact me via my contact page.
Comments
2 Responses to “GSM verses CDMA Cell Phones”
Leave a Reply
Pretty sweet. My cordless (non cell) phone is a Motorola, and Ican use it some 100+ feet from my house. They have been in wireless a VERY long time.
actually Nextel is an iDEN network, iDEN is a proprietary system maintained and created by Motorola. TDMA is now what is referred to as Analog cell service and is less and less supported. these two should not be confused… TDMA is 1G (technically 2G) cell technology, it was the first widely used cell technology. iDEN could be considered 3G or 2G.. its really a whole different animal, Nextel is the ONLY company to use iDEN in the world.. this also exlains why all Nextel phones are Moto.