Windows Phone 8.1 update 1 and 4G support

[Shakeel Osmani1]

Hi Guys,
I was reading about Windows Phone 8.1 update 1 on an Indian website. Sorry I cannot post link as this I my first post. The part that attracted my attention is:

"Lumia devices starting from 520, 525, 620, 625, 720, 820, 920 and 1020 among others will reap the benefits of the Denim Update from Microsoft. With this update, select models will open up to offer 4G connectivity support. "Barring the Lumia 820, all mid range to high-end Lumia variants will become 4G supported, even the Lumia 625 for that matter," he added.

The company strategically decided to keep the 4G modules, software locked and this way, its devices, no matter how obsolete they become in the market, still retain the prospect of using 4G services."

Is it possible, is there any truth to this or is it a misconception of the writer.

 

[Athull]

No way, 4g is not something than can be activated by an update.
The older chips simply don't have the 4g support and even among the latter low-mid end models only specific versions of SD400 has LTE function and they are released as a separate model like in the case of 730/735 were 730 is dual Sim while 735 is LTE enabled.
Whoever wrote this is highly misinformed

 

[EspHack]

No way, 4g is not something than can be activated by an update.
The older chips simply don't have the 4g support and even among the latter low-mid end models only specific versions of SD400 has LTE function and they are released as a separate model like in the case of 730/735 were 730 is dual Sim while 735 is LTE enabled.
Whoever wrote this is highly misinformed

it can be, take Verizon for example, they disabled all LTE bands but the 700mhz one on the lumia 928, a software update to the baseband could enable the rest of supported bands, in my case, my carrier uses band 4 for LTE which is 1700-2100mhz if im not wrong, and the phone officially supports those bands according to QUALCOMM, so im stuck in 3G because of this, its similar to the Bluetooth situation where we have 4.0 LE capable hardware but the drivers aren't there, so we were stuck with 3.0 until cyan

on topic: just look for the official specs of these phones at QUALCOMM or nokia-Microsoft websites, even Wikipedia or gsmarena, they tell you exactly what cellular technology they support and which bands they use, if they match the carrier's bands then its a go unless its a carrier locked device and it has a crappy firmware crippling functionality like I mentioned above

 

[abhirajsoni]

4G option is enabled now with the latest preview for developers update. I am using L930.

 

[RichardBurt]

4G works on the 920 and has done for over a year in the UK

 

[Athull]

it can be, take Verizon for example, they disabled all LTE bands but the 700mhz one on the lumia 928, a software update to the baseband could enable the rest of supported bands, in my case, my carrier uses band 4 for LTE which is 1700-2100mhz if im not wrong, and the phone officially supports those bands according to QUALCOMM, so im stuck in 3G because of this, its similar to the Bluetooth situation where we have 4.0 LE capable hardware but the drivers aren't there, so we were stuck with 3.0 until cyan

on topic: just look for the official specs of these phones at QUALCOMM or nokia-Microsoft websites, even Wikipedia or gsmarena, they tell you exactly what cellular technology they support and which bands they use, if they match the carrier's bands then its a go unless its a carrier locked device and it has a crappy firmware crippling functionality like I mentioned above

But we are talking abt an Indian website here and thus Indian variants which are not carrier locked so if they had 4g capabilities they wld have been already active without the need to have an update.
Also India uses a rather bizarre band for 4g which are not supported by a lot of international models.