iPad 3 & iPhone 5 May Finally Get Their LTE Chipset

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One of the biggest things that, at last report, prevented the iPhone 5 from launching alongside the iPhone 4S, as was previously rumored, was the lack of solid LTE chips that wouldn’t drain power like a cloud of mosquitoes in a blood bank. But now, that may be about to turn around, thanks to reports from Qualcomm that say they’ve got a brand new class of LTE chips that will give the function to devices without pulling a lot of juice: the Gobi 4000.

The Gobi 4000 chips are set to offer up not only 4G LTE, the current hope for the next-gen Apple gear, but also offer up HSPA+, HSPA, and EV-DO, giving them compatibility with a whole lot of networks. And what’s more, Qualcomm’s looking to put them in plenty more devices than the iPhone 5 and the iPad 3 to boot, including Dell Latitude laptops (a personal favorite of mine) as well as Lenovo ThinkPads. And admittedly, no one at Qualcomm’s specifically mentioned the Apple hardware, but based on current reports, they might be what’s separating the next-gen Apple gear from 4G LTE connectivity.

See, iPads with LTE have been the subject of Apple testing for some time now, as far back as August, by some reports. And the new Gobi 4000′s don’t pull near as much power, but the iPad is a much better test bed than an iPhone as it has more sheer battery life. But at the same time, they’re walking something of a fine line here, as the 4G LTE network in the United States, one of Apple’s biggest markets, is still a bit on the soft side. Basically only Verizon has theirs actively up and running, while AT&T and Sprint are in the process of getting theirs built.

So the question becomes one of whether the infrastructure will be ready for the new 4G LTE devices, and when they’ll roll out. But considering that earlier reports suggest that the full next-gen devices won’t be operational until next year, we could just be looking at all the players getting together ahead of the game.

And what do you guys think about all this? Figure we’ll see 4G LTE from Apple sooner rather than later? Or is this the kind of thing we’ll be talking about come October of 2012? No matter what you think, we want to hear from you, and the comments section below is the perfect place to do just that!