Is My Phone GSM or CDMA? | Reviews.org

You didn’t buy a cell phone so that you could worry about a bunch of technical gobbledygook. But knowing the difference between GSM and CDMA can help you avoid a big headache in the future.

GSM stands for Global System for Mobile communication. CDMA stands for Code Division Multiple Access. Those are just fancy ways of describing two forms of radio technology that phones and phone networks use to transmit voice and data.

One of the biggest differences between these two systems is that GSM phones use SIM cards to link a particular phone with its network, while CDMA phones don’t require a SIM card because the phone itself is linked to the network.

However, with the widespread adoption of 4G LTE networks, this has changed. The GSM vs. CDMA debate was really only about 2G and 3G technology. Now that 4G (and 5G) are the standards, phone manufacturers like Apple, Google, and Samsung are creating devices that are compatible with all phone technologies: CDMA, GSM, LTE.