Upgradable WWAN on the x201 tablet

[AndreR]

Notice: This post have been changed/reworked.

I bought the Lenovo x201 tablet 3113-AH5 without GPS and WWAN and with the Intel Centrino 6200. But I wanted the 3G/GPS ability and therefore did some research which I explains below.

First I wanted to know if the computer is ready for the upgrade and what was required. I opened it up and found out that everything is in place (antennas, cables, sim-card reader etc) except the WWAN (GPS, 3G etc.) card.
As you can see in the picture so is the WWAN antennas connectors in place (red) and an extra WLAN antenna connector (blue) and there is space for an WWAN card.


I also noticed that an extra cable for the Intel Centrino Ultimate 6300 which uses three antennas instead of two.


So I decided to buy both the WWAN card and the Intel Centrino Ultimate 6300. But first I did some research. Apparently so ain´t all cards supported by the x201 BIOS/motherboard. Some people have reported to have problems with connections and stability issues when using cards that where not supported in the "maintance manual". The Ericsson card is cheaper, but I decided to go with the Qualcom Gobi 2000, 60Y3183, which is standard for the x201. Some of the Gobi 2000 cards are locked the Verizon in US, so be sure you get an unlocked/open card. Unlocked Lenovo ibm Thinkpad Gobi 2000 3G WWAN card 60Y3183 for T410s T510i X201 | eBay And also the Intel Centrino Ultimate 6300 with the supported part number. Intel IBM 6300 Wifi Wireless Card 410 410S X201i x201 | eBay

I got the cards and the installation was very fast and easy by following the Lenovo Service Training videos.

The Intel Centrino Ultimate 6300.
I did some very unprofessional test. I tested the wireless with a router placed far from my home, but the router is old and the area contains maybe 15 routers which are all competing with the signals. The Intel Centrino Ultimate 6300 actually performed worse than the Intel Centrino 6200, but it could be this router only. This is very hard to test if you don´t have some kind of laboratory environment since my area is crowded with routers interfering with each other.

The Qualcom Gobi 2000.
The 3G browsing worked very well! I got better reception with the computer than with my smartphone with the same sim-card! The software Lenovo provided also did a great job.
The GPS however has it ups and downs since it´s sensitive. Lenovo provides the software which controls the GPS and it also contains a Google Maps window which shows the computers position updated every second. I also installed PC Navigator 11 Free. The PC Navigator uses only 6% of the CPU and I got 6 hours with brightness at seven. I tested it against an TomTom and the TomTom where a little faster to obtain the GPS signal. Outdoors in a car and with a clouded sky so did it immediately understand where it was and with a very accurate position (1-2 meters), which is clearly better than the TomTom device.
Here is an video with a lot of turning and how the PC Navigator Free performs.

Final verdict.
The Intel Centrino Ultimate 6300 is hard to test, but I have not experienced any improvements over the Intel Centrino 6200. Maybe with a modern router you could notice a big difference, but not with old ones.

The Qualcom Gobi 2000 performed very well with the 3G, even better than my smartphone and the Lenovo software did for me an excellent job. The GPS also performs very well with the most accurate position targeting I have seen (better than my TomTom, our smartphones and my former military device (Swedish army = could be crap)). However, the GPS is more sensitive (problems to determine it´s position) indoors than an TomTom device which could be a problem in some city or forest environment? Overall so am I pleased with it´s performance.

[Hattori Hanzo]

Good info!
I'd wish FSC and HP would have been this lazy in costumization back then and just provided more antennas and hardware than needed

Did you happen to find out anything about whether BIOS whitelisting is used to prevent certain cards to be used?

[AndreR]

I only found out that the BIOS is very restricted and Lenovo only recommends some few cards mainly from Qualcom and Ericsson. In the Lenovo forums they managed to get some other cards working but experienced a lot of problems.

I also just found out that they also lists some parts that are compatible with the x200/x201 in the maintance manual.
http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub...45n3683_04.pdf

[AndreR]

First post updated!