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Maybe you can help point me to the chipset requirement for UMA? I'm just using a teardown list from isuppli on the 9800 (Which does UMA just as well as any other Blackberry on T-Mo's network): BlackBerry Torch Carries $171.05 Bill of Materials, iSuppli Teardown Reveals - Teardowns at iSuppli
None of the RF chips listed have any reference to UMA functionality listed and I can't find reference to this magical chip / chipset that enables a device to do UMA.
As far as I know UMA has always been a software enabled feature, there isn't anything that you need specifically with the chipset in the device to support it. Also, why would the 9900 offer an experience more like an Android handset rather than the same experience the previous dozen or so Blackberries that have supported UMA?
Still pretty sure that when UMA does become available with an OS update it will function and feel exactly the same as it has on the previous handsets including hand-off capability. But we'll all know the answer to that soon enough.
08-28-11 12:54 PM - Maybe you can help point me to the chipset requirement for UMA? I'm just using a teardown list from isuppli on the 9800 (Which does UMA just as well as any other Blackberry on T-Mo's network): BlackBerry Torch Carries $171.05 Bill of Materials, iSuppli Teardown Reveals - Teardowns at iSuppli
None of the RF chips listed have any reference to UMA functionality listed and I can't find reference to this magical chip / chipset that enables a device to do UMA.
As far as I know UMA has always been a software enabled feature, there isn't anything that you need specifically with the chipset in the device to support it. Also, why would the 9900 offer an experience more like an Android handset rather than the same experience the previous dozen or so Blackberries that have supported UMA?
Still pretty sure that when UMA does become available with an OS update it will function and feel exactly the same as it has on the previous handsets including hand-off capability. But we'll all know the answer to that soon enough.
The reason why I believe it is hardware based is that we have seen the service books for UMA work on the 9800, but not for other GSM BB's (like the 9550). Correct me if I am wrong.
For the 9900, it was rumored for a long time that they won't put UMA in it, as well as the other OS7 devices, since the providers are starting to phase it out, as well as the fact that UMA-Lite is more cost-effective.08-28-11 02:35 PM - Yup, the T-Mobile 9700 had it from the start, but the Rogers devices did not, a software update brought them UMA capability. This was most likely a certificate issue and not just raw support, but the whole "UMA after launch" thing has been done before with BBs.
What it boils down to is that you need a relatively modern wifi chipset in the phone to be able to support UMA, and that's it from a hardware perspective. UMA has always been a software based solution beyond having a wifi chipset that can deal with the hand off. And I can't imagine that the wifi radio in the 9900 has taken such a step back so that it no longer supports a few simple programming calls to make the hand off. Android devices don't have a very seamless UMA implementation because it was never made with UMA in mind and would require some pretty drastic kernel changes to achieve the same level of integration other devices have.
UMA is basically just an IPSec tunnel back to the carrier's GAN, it seems like it should be more complicated, but it's not. The hand over from the radio is the tricky part, and that's the portion Android has issues with. The OS is open source and easily modified, but the binary files for the radio are all pre-compiled and not something that's easily tweaked. With only one carrier supporting UMA in the US and other countries not having wide scale deployment of it, it's just not a priority.
Also, the 9550 never got it as that was never a true GSM device, it was a primarily a CDMA device with GSM abilities for roaming. CDMA Blackberries have completely different radio stacks then the GSM only models and it would have required some work for RIM. And that extra work would only benefit an extremely small set of users, ones who brought a CDMA device over to their GSM carrier.
Sorry to beat the topic up too much, but I want to make sure those that are unsure of what UMA will look like on the 9900, that it will be the same experience you've got on your current UMA enabled BB.
On topic, I spent some time at the T-Mobile store and got to play with the device and they put one aside with my name on it for Wed AM. I loaded up the need for speed demo for them and had a chance to talk to an employee who wasn't a fan of BBs. I asked him what he could do on an Android device that you can't do on a BB, the best answer he came up with was netflix.
He was surprised at NFS and said maybe the platform will show some promise. Last edited by HaTaX; 08-28-11 at 05:38 PM.
08-28-11 05:36 PM
