T-Mobile Nokia Lumia 810 evidently not getting LTE firmware upgrade

The other day, we doused some cold water on the rumor that the Nokia Lumia 810 on T-Mobile would get a firmware update to enable its LTE radio for that carrier. Seeing as the chipset is a SoC Snapdragon S4, it’s typical for such setups to have features there but not enabled (either by request, OEM choice or lack of proper APIs)—in other words, it’s totally plausible.

Reader of the site jgbstetson emailed the president and CEO of T-Mobile about the update and had his question pushed to the right people in the chain of command (much like Nokia, evidently you can get a response from the bigwigs at T-Mobile).

Responding to the question was Randy Meyerson, Senior Director, Product Marketing at T-Mobile, who noted that such an update is not possible. Here’s an excerpt:

“I’m following up as per my note last night. Unfortunately, the Nokia Lumia 810 is not upgradable to LTE. While it is true that it has a chipset that is LTE-capable in certain circumstances, the variant that was used in this device can’t be enabled for LTE.”

The notion of the Nokia Lumia 810 getting LTE started with Engadget back in late January and picked up some confirmation by a later FCC filing.

A few days ago, Windows Phone Daily had unofficial confirmation via a T-Mobile “rep” but as we all know, they can be heavily unreliable (and are usually the last told of changes). Things went even more downhill when during a recent press release T-Mobile spoke about future LTE devices and current ones getting an update. Only the Note II was announced (and subsequently updated) with no mention of the Lumia 810.

Now with the Senior Director of Product Marketing saying that it can’t (or won’t) be done, it seems to put the kibosh on any hopes for an LTE enabled 810, at least via an upgrade. We suppose T-Mobile could still opt for a “Lumia 810S” or some model variant with the proper LTE bands, but if they’re not seeing strong sales with that device, the impetus to do so could be lacking.

We’re not 100% ready to declare this dead, but we’re getting close. Sorry, folks.

Thanks, jgbstetson, for the tip!

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and wearable tech. He has reviewed laptops for over 10 years and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, Arm64 processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, performed polysomnographs in NYC, and was a motion-picture operator for 17 years.