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Why iPhone 5's Support For HD Voice Will Mean Nothing To U.S. Users

This article is more than 10 years old.

News that the iPhone 5 will support HD voice has been celebrated by cell phone users who assume, quite logically, that it means they'll get better sound quality from the new phones.

"HALLELUJA!" one Apple fan wrote. "Poor voice quality has bugged the h*** out of me for years!"

iphone 5 mockups (Photo credit: methodshop.com)

Unfortunately, the sorry truth is that voice quality, at least in the United States, is not likely to get better until sometime next year, regardless of whether you buy the iPhone 5.

Doug Mohney, editor of HD Voice News , said the main obstacle is that U.S. carriers have not yet upgraded their networks to support the technology. He pointed out that most Android phones have supported HD voice for over a year— but if you're an Android user living in the United States, you would not have heard the difference.

That's not the case outside of the United States. "You go over to Europe, Kenya, Uganda, Siberia, you can get HD voice," Mohney said.  According the The Verge, Apple has 20 carrier partners ready to deliver HD voice as soon as the iPhone 5 is available—presumably outside the United States.

HD voice provides higher fidelity by using a different algorithm for compression and playback of audio. There are a handful of HD voice codecs, including G.722, G.722.1, and G.772.2, which is also known as AMR-WB. The latter has been widely incorporated into Android phones, Mohney said.

Because of the current difficulties of exchanging HD voice calls between carrier networks, in order to get the highest fidelity, two people would have to be using HD voice-enabled phones and talking on the same network.

Sprint is the first U.S. carrier to announce an HD voice service, but ironically, the HD voice capabilities of the iPhone 5 are not compatible with its network, at least not at this time.

Mohney said HD voice should be widely available in the United States once the carriers complete their rollout of 4G LTE networks next year and turn on an application called Voice Over LTE, or VoLTE. At that point, if you have a phone that runs on the 4G LTE network, like the iPhone 5, you should be able to make HD voice calls with another person in the same network.

Until then, you will need to use an VoIP app like Bria, Rebtel or Skype to get HD voice quality.