The International Consumer Electronics Show, the giant gadget convention that wrapped up on Friday, has brought some frustrating news for AT&T or Sprint customers who bought a cutting-edge 4G smartphone last year.

That phone will soon be outdated.

AT&T Mobility and Sprint Nextel unveiled some of the first smartphones that will tap into their new, even faster fourth-generation networks.

But wait, Sprint has been talking about its 4G network since launching one in 2008 followed by its premier phone, HTC's Evo 4G, in 2010. And AT&T began adding "4G" to the names of many of its smartphones early last year.

Now, two of the largest U.S. cellular carriers are ramping up yet another 4G system. They will have LTE, or Long-term Evolution, to compete with the one Verizon Wireless launched more than a year ago.

T-Mobile USA says it has 4G, which is similar to AT&T's old 4G, but the carrier has not talked about plans for 4G LTE deployment. (Get all that?)

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/13/tech/m...ces/index.html

 

Thanks so much for posting this

 

I find all the talk about '4G' so stupid. First of all, as 3G+ currently stands I don't find it such a big deal to be able to stream 1080p YouTube faster than i can view it, especially with data pans so expensive here. Another thing is they're not even allowed to call it '4G' until it can transfer data upwards of 1Gbps; most people don't even have home internet that's anywhere near that fast yet! I'd like to see a cellphone transfer at even 10% of '4G' speeds with the current telecomm' infrastructure.