Wesley's Tool-Box

Cellular communications have traditionally used separate voice and data channels. But with the advent of smartphones, bulk of the communications now happen on the data channel. It's no coincidence that only the data channel remained by the 4th generation (4G) technology. To carry voice, though, a fallback to 3G or older technology's voice channel was initially needed. But VoLTE (Voice over LTE) came onto the scene to do away with this by letting the data channel handle voice as well.

As with many technologies, Korea was a forerunner in adopting VoLTE. World's first commercial VoLTE service was launched more than two years ago by two of the three major Korean carriers, SK Telecom and LG U+. The remaining one, KT, joined mere two months later. Worldwide adoption didn't really take off until earlier this year, however. About a dozen carriers around the globe now have it. Noting this trend, Apple has decided to enable the capability in the iPhone 6 series.

So naturally, I wanted to see VoLTE on my iPhone 6 Plus in action. It can be enabled in the Settings app by going to Cellular and selecting "Voice and Data" option for LTE. The previous 5/5C/5S models simply have toggle switch for LTE instead, even with iOS 8.0 update. After that, I made voice calls to a lot of different lines, including a VoLTE-enabled phone on the same carrier. But every time, the connection indicator turned from LTE to 3G, showing that VoLTE wasn't working.


I checked to see how the network recognized my iPhone 6 Plus. It was being listed as an OMD Default Handset, the same name that my iPhone 5S was given when it was brought in from the US. In other words, a generic device that it doesn't recognize. Perhaps the network couldn't tell whether the device had a VoLTE capability, so it simply ignored its attempts. It was time to visit my carrier's branch office to get to the bottom of this.

LTE frequencies tend to be quite varied because it has to be either laid alongside or replace the existing 2G and 3G networks. Even so, Apple tries to support as much frequencies as possible because it will reduce the number of region-specific models. Unfortunately, iPhone 5S and 5C each sprawled to five different models, so people asked around whether their iPhones would work on another country's LTE network. I even wrote about iPhone 5S's LTE network compatibility last year, and it has the longest comment thread in this website.

This time around, though, the number of models were reduced to a much more manageable two for both iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. The massive 20-band support did the trick. The good news here is that, if you bought an unlocked iPhone 6 or 6 Plus anywhere in the world and come to Korea, the LTE will work with all three local carriers. Korea should get A1586 / A1524 models on sale in a couple of months, but A1549 / A1522 models often found in United States or Canada should work, too.

After I brought the A1524 iPhone 6 Plus from Japan to Korea, I put the SIM card from my 5S and turned it on. The device had no problems connecting to SK Telecom's LTE network right away. I've confirmed that the situation is the same when you're on KT's network, as well. It seems that the network no longer goes into 3G mode when it sees an unrecognized LTE device, which used to be the case when I brought the iPhone 5S from United States last year.


Meanwhile, the top speed for LTE data on iPhone 6 series was pushed to 150Mbps from 100Mbps of 5/5C/5S. The bleeding edge phones in Korea are always a step ahead - 150Mbps was possible when iPhone 5 came out and the recent models can do 225Mbps - but with low monthly data caps, they are little more than technology show-off right now.

In any case, I wanted to see how fast the iPhone 6 Plus can do LTE data in real life, so I ran a speed test app. As you can see here, it can go almost up to 100Mbps. Pretty good, but that's how fast an iPhone 5S could supposedly do, as well. Obviously, a side-by-side test was needed.