Budget LTE for global use

[randomrogue]

Was hoping that a global version of the Moto G LTE would be announced. It might with the "UK version" imminent but are there any suggestions out there for a decent LTE capable phone with global LTE bands? The US ones are very limited.

 

[cronos]

Do you know what the 'LTE global' bands are? I have the impression that these completely varied according to regions.

Which countries LTE bands in particular that you are looking for?

Also, you mentioned 'budget LTE global' as if non-budget phones with 'global LTE' bands are available. Which phones are these?

 

[randomrogue]

Well the US version of the Moto G LTE for example is $220 but it only supports bands 2, 4, 5, and 17.

For global use you need 3, 7, and 20 with 4 being pretty useful for South America. That will pretty much help cover Europe, South America, the Middle East, and most of Asia. Add on a couple other bands to make it even better. It of course does depend on provider but the US LTE bands pretty much restrict the phone to the US and US only. Canada even requires band 7 although I suppose you could scrape by with a US phone.

For comparison a Nexus 5 supports bands 1/2/4/5/17/19/25/26/41 for the US version and 1/3/5/7/8/20 for the global version. What I'm hoping is that a global version of the Moto G shows up on the market. The Moto X is kinda broken down into too many regions to be that useful. The Europe one only has 3 bands and the South America one is missing band 20 which is really needed for Europe.

What I'm really trying to avoid is having a phone for the US, Europe, and Asia/South America.

 

[Trombe]

Global LTE is pretty much nonexistant for anything other than the iPhone 5S and maybe some of Sony's newer phones as far as I can tell. Wouldn't count on it for a while either, it's probably a pain fitting all the antennas for the different frequencies/bands into a single device. Do you spend enough time in all regions that you really need LTE in everywhere as opposed to buying a phone for your native region and then using 3G fallback in others?

 

[paperwastage]

give it some time

WTR1605 was the bleeding edge in transceiver in 2013

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6541/the-state-of-qualcomms-modems-wtr1605-and-mdm9x25/2

Unfortunately even with 7 total ports for bands, LTE roaming and shipping a single SKU still remains a difficult to impossible prospect for even the most aggressive OEMs. Obviously the long term goal is to be able to accommodate more ports, the challenge is doing so without driving up cost or size dramatically.

wait for qualcomm to make a 6th gen transceiver, or have manufacturers use two transceivers in a product