This question has always bothered me and knows many wonders what is the difference between CDMA and GSM mobiles and technologies, so let me try to explain it for those who still don’t know.

The GSM technology was primarily developed for voice transmission and this is the only thing it does. It has fixed frequencies and slow speeds but it does what it is supposed to.

CDMA (Code - Divisions Multiple Access) is a technology developed for mobile phones and it’s the next step from GSM. GSM uses a specific frequency for each user in the cell, while CDMA uses the entire available spectrum.
CDMA was first introduced by the English during World War II as a military technology in order to avoid the German signal jamming devices. They sent the signal using multiple frequencies and so making it a lot harder to be detected.
As any other technologies, CDMA also has developed since the first version. The first step is CDMA One, and then turned into CDMA200 and wideband CDMA with much faster speeds.
Code - Divisions Multiple Access is the base of 2G and 3G communications system. By using such a wide variety of frequencies lots of data can be transmitted and so it’s possible to have video calls instead of usual audio only conversations.

As you can see we can’t talk about the difference between CDMA and GSM here, it is more like the development from GSM to CDMA because all started with the GSM.

Today there is a wide variety of mobile phones able to support both the technology we talked about here. The best thing is that you can usually turn off the 3G service which is a battery killer but if you use the internet you would want to leave it on for a faster connection. Also, the 3G may not have such coverage as the GSM does.

I hope you found this article useful to understand what is happening under the “hood” of your mobile phone.

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