Apple Fixes iPhone 4S To Support China Mobile, Despite No Partnership With Carrier

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China Mobile, the largest carrier in the world, officially partnered with Apple last year.
Image courtesy of The Tenth Dragon on Flickr

Apple is yet to strike a deal with China Mobile over the iPhone, but that hasn’t stopped the Cupertino company from supporting China Mobile customers who want to use its latest smartphone with the carrier unofficially. Just a month after Apple confirmed that the iPhone 4S has issues with China Mobile SIM cards, it has fixed the device to eliminate signal issues.

China Mobile announced earlier this month that Apple has now modified the way in which the iPhone 4S interacts with China Mobile SIM cards to ensure that all devices purchased after February 8 connect to the world’s largest carrier without any problems. Those purchased before that date will get an iOS update shortly after Apple’s iPad 3 event on Wednesday, according to the carrier, which will eliminate the issues for them, too.

The rather bizarre issue, which is believed to be a result of the GSM chip’s inability to support the E frequency band, meant users could not make calls despite a full signal, according to The Next Web. But while this may be a hardware problem, it seems Apple has been able to rectify the issue by modifying its software.

Using an iPhone on China Mobile still isn’t a seamless experience, however. The device still does not support the carrier’s TD-SCDMA 3G network, so it is restricted to 2G data connections only. However, this doesn’t seem to be a problem for the 5 million+ subscribers who still choose to use Apple’s device.

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