Remember our story earlier last month concerning Apple’s iPhone 4S which was released, but did have its fair share of trouble with China Mobile’s SIM cards? Good news – it has taken slightly more than a month for Apple to resolve the issue, at least this is what we know according to China Mobile. The issue had nothing to do with SIM cards from China Mobile, but rather, the iPhone 4S’s GSM chip was to be blamed fully, since it supported only the P frequency band (885-915MHZ), but did not do the E frequency band (880-890MHz) tango.
It seems that all devices rolled out after February 8th have resolved this issue, and are more than capable of fully supporting China Mobile’s network. Folks who purchased an iPhone 4S prior to February 8th and are on China Mobile’s network should be able to benefit from Apple’s China-specific iOS update that is tipped to arrive later this month, and this update will no doubt resolve the signal problems. I did wonder for a while whether those iPhones sold before February 8th were shipped back to the US or elsewhere that would be compatible while the newer, compatible versions were manufactured. Guess not.