Samsung and Apple. Apple and Samsung. Neither company is too fond of the other at this moment in time, and the reason for this is pretty clear. Samsung's had to pay out over a billion in damages, and Apple has had to commit itself to a legal battle with Samsung in the first place, despite patent licensing being offered in 2010.
Like any good courtroom drama, it continues after the actual settlement has been made. Now the battle for Japanese consumers could be heating up, with Tamotsu Shoji having decided that Samsung didn't infringe on Apple's patents for syncing audio and video to a device.
Samsung says that if Apple crams 4G-LTE into the next iPhone, they'll sue immediately. The Retina Display iPad already features 4G connectivity so it wouldn't be a massive stretch to drop the same into the iPhone. Samsung aren't going to make it easy for them to introduce this technology to the iPhone, for whatever reason.
Both companies are giants of the mobile industry, and neither seems to want to just go down. Instead they seem hell-bent on slugging away at each other until they either run out of resources to keep going. Even judges have had their fill of the conflict, with Richard Posner saying he's "had his fill".
Apple's iPhone already has 4G. Well, not really, but you do get a pretty little 4G icon on your status bar if you're with AT&T. Quite a few people seem to buy in that the current iPhone has 4G connectivity, even if it doesn't. It's a common misconception with AT&T's iPhone 4 handsets, but it could be argued that it isn't actually wrong to display.
Since all new iPhone news is going on rumor and speculation, you might as well toss a coin on whether it'll have 4G-LTE or not. There are only two possible answers, and both of them are covered with a single coin. That coin could run into much more in the form of damages, assuming another legal battle flares up between the two companies.
Source: Ubergizmo and Korea Times
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