Evidence Mounts For Apple LTE

href="http://cdn.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/lte.png">class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-23208" title="lte" src="http://cdn.everythingicafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/lte.png" alt="" width="472" height="194" />

Earlier this week we heard that href="http://www.everythingicafe.com/is-apple-installing-lte-readers-in-their-stores/2011/08/16/">LTE broadcasters were being installed in Apple stores and that Apple may have been testing LTE devices in the wild. Now two new pieces of evidence have come to light showing that Apple might be in the midst of going LTE.

href="http://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/21/apple-testing-lte-in-ios-5-and-hiring-more-lte-engineers/">MacRumors has spotted that iOS 5 makes explicit mention of LTE in its code. The references come from a .plist file that is used as part of Apple’s internally used Fieldtest application, which implies that Apple is testing LTE devices in some way, shape or form.

Forbes called attention to the fact that href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethwoyke/2011/08/18/more-lte-iphone-evidence-apple-seeking-engineers-for-lte-field-tests/">Apple is hiring LTE engineers.

Smart money says we won’t see any LTE devices until next year, be they iPad or iPhone — but we could be wrong, Apple has surprised us before.