First CDMA Phone With Simultaneous Voice+Data Now Available!

I know Qualcomm (CDMA chip maker) was working feverishly last year to produce a eHRPD chip and get it into a phone, and it looks like the time has now come with the HTC Thunderbolt on Verizon!

What is eHRPD? Well, I'm a GSM/UMTS kind of guy, so maybe I'm not the best guy to ask, but my understanding is that eHRPD is SVDO or some kind of variant of it, which allows CDMA phones to make a voice call on CDMA and a data transfer on EVDO (or LTE) at the same time. Something that UMTS (ie: AT&T's 3G) could do from the start, using only 1 radio and 2 separate connections (RAB's=Radio Access Bearers). But I believe eHRPD is using 2 separate radios simultaneously. Since this is all done from within the phone, there's no need for any network upgrade, so can be used anywhere (ie: no asking "does Verizon have eHRPD coverage in my area?")

But anyway, still pretty big news I think. And not a peep out of either VZW or HTC! I searched the Thunderbolt User Guide and not a word of eHRPD. Surprisingly there's NOTHING I could find on Engadget or any of the other techie news/blog sites either (altho that may change very soon ). At the moment I can only find a few forum posts about people having problems with 3G connections in non-LTE areas, and other people advising them to force the phone out of eHRPD and back to CDMA manually. Maybe not a great start for eHRPD ...and maybe why VZW is keeping quiet about it, until some bugs are worked out?

Having 3G problems on your ThunderBolt? A fix is just a few settings away | Android Central

 

I'm in Europe and not too familiar with CDMA networks, it's the first time I've heard of HRPD as it won't be used here since UMTS->LTE is a natural migration. I just now read a ALU white-paper and it does focus on the CDMA/LTE shift, and does mention upgrades needed on the network side, so yea you're right, then it's not an incarnation of SVDO but something more to bridge the gap between CDMA and LTE (or 3GPP2 and 3GPP)

But I am also reading about people who live in non-LTE areas saying that they can do simultaneous voice/data on CDMA/EVDO. Is this correct? Or to have simultaneous voice/data is LTE also required in addition to CDMA?