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China Telecom advertises intent to sell iPhone 6 supporting all networks with curious set of renders

china-telecom

If you thought things were messy with U.S. networks, Verizon and Sprint using CMDA and AT&T and T-Mobile using GSM, things are even worse in China – with WCDMA, CDMA2000, CDMA1X, GSM, TDD-LTE and FDD-LTE all in use by different carriers in different combinations.

The iPhone 6 may be about to make life a whole lot easier, though, with Sina (via ZDNet) reporting that the model sold by China Telecom at least will support all of the wireless networks in use in the country, based on a Weibo post by the carrier. Admittedly the image used in the Weibo above looks a little different than the general consensus we’ve seen before – they were created by Tomas Moyano and Nicolàs Aichino, and China Telecom likely downloaded them from Bēhance.

That aside, the message they are sending might be more interesting…

This suggests that Apple may be making a single version of each iPhone model for the Chinese market, simplifying its inventory and also enabling China Telecom – the poor man’s carrier in China – to offer LTE data for the first time. The company has been losing subscribers ever since the iPhone launched on China Mobile.

It should be noted that China Telecom has since deleted the Weibo post on which the Sina report was based, so there’s no way to tell whether it was untrue or simply made public before it should have been.

China Telecom made the news recently when Apple confirmed that it has started using the company’s data centers for iCloud storage for Chinese customers.

More of the renders below:

weibo-iphone-6-1

iPhone-6

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Comments

  1. Tim Jr. - 10 years ago

    Lord, I hope this phone looks like that… Soooo SOOOO much cleaner…

    • Robert Nixon - 10 years ago

      I agree that it looks better than the leaks/mockups we’ve seen so far, but I think it’s pretty unlikely that this is going to be the final design. For those white panels to work, there would need to be a recessed area in the housing for them to sit up, but none of the shells we’ve seen thus far appear to account for that.

    • Taste_of_Apple - 10 years ago

      Same here! It was rumored they may use glass, but so far all the leaks have shown otherwise.

  2. Kayo Sthe Ory - 10 years ago

    I would be thrilled if that is what it looks like. Those antenna breaks look a lot nicer than the simple line across I have seen on most renders.

  3. Americo Costa Neto - 10 years ago

    I love it!! Wanna buy it right now

  4. Alex (@Metascover) - 10 years ago

    These are fakes using Hajek’s 3D models. The bands on the final model seem to be larger than that.

    • eldonchew - 10 years ago

      You have seen the final model? :o

  5. Taste_of_Apple - 10 years ago

    I’m curious to see how Apple deals with this, although it certainly won’t be public.

  6. zubeirg87 - 10 years ago

    I would agree that these renders look much more beautiful than what we’ve seen so far. But my guess is that this is not gonna be the actual thing. I would say the prototypes with the big antenna lines are the real thing. Because, though less beautiful, metal is tougher than those glass in-lays found on these renders here and on the iphone 5/5s. That being said, I wonder why they have not opted for liquid-metal inlays which would be both tough and radio transparent.

  7. Dintel Cobb (@DintelCobb) - 10 years ago

    These renders are made by Tomas Moyano and Nicolàs Aichino

    https://www.behance.net/gallery/18081199/iPhone-6

    I hope that the iPhone 6 will be like that

  8. That is one ugly iphone!!

    • athynz - 10 years ago

      So Samsung can be expected to copy this in about a month or so and all of the fAandroids will claim Samsung came up with it first… or that it is a copy of a feature phone…

  9. Pallav Jha (@jhapallav) - 10 years ago

    Dont think Steve Jobs could have approved this curved design…. It seems like Samsung Galaxy series phones…

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Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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