The iPhone 4S 4G Debacle

With the iOS 5.1 update released on Wednesday, an AT&T iPhone 4S will show 4G in the status bar in a lot of areas. Before the launch of the 4S, AT&T said it was working with Apple to put a 4G indicator in the status bar instead of showing 3G.

AT&T claims they did this because the iPhone 4S can theoretically get 14.4 mbps downlink speeds, which just so happens to be their minimum requirement for a device being able to be considered 4G.

This whole incident isn't really about the iPhone 4S getting 4G overnight with the iOS 5.1 update because that's not at all what happened. Basically this is just an act coming ou of AT&T's marketing department so they can get a leg up on Verizon, Sprint, and C-Spire.

AT&T is hoping that people will go around telling everyone, "Hey my iPhone 4S has 4G on AT&T!" or "You should get an iPhone 4S on AT&T because it has 4G."

To sum it up, the iPhone 4S can achieve HSPA+ speeds (a maximum of 14.4 mbps), which AT&T considers 4G.

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