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Intel to Produce 'Significant Portion' of LTE Modem Chips for iPhone 7

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CLSA Securities analyst Srini Pajjuri has corroborated multiple reports claiming that Intel will supply LTE modems for the iPhone 7, according to a research note obtained by NDTV.

Pajjuri said that Intel has secured a "significant portion" of the LTE chips, likely in the range of 30 to 40 percent of production. Qualcomm will likely be tasked with the remaining orders.
While Apple is looking to cut some reliance on Qualcomm, the company doesn't plan to completely turn away from the chipmaker. On the contrary, the analyst believes that the company will "share shift back" to Qualcomm in 2017.
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Intel reportedly has 1,000 or more employees working on preparing the Intel 7360 LTE modem for the iPhone 7 lineup. The 7360 LTE modem chip [PDF] from Intel features faster theoretical downlink speeds up to 450 Mbps, uplink speeds up to 100 Mbps, and support for LTE category 10 and 29 LTE bands overall.

In layman's terms, that means the iPhone 7 could have even faster LTE speeds for browsing the web, downloading apps, streaming video, and other data-related tasks. Apple already improved LTE speeds on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus by adopting LTE-Advanced, which pushed downlink speeds up to a theoretical max of 300 Mbps.

Apple currently sources all of its LTE modems for iPhones from Qualcomm, including the MDM9635 chipset in the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, which offers theoretical downlink speeds up to 300 Mbps and uplink speeds up to 50 Mbps. Qualcomm has been Apple's exclusive supplier of LTE modems for over three years.

In the future, Apple may create a system-on-a-chip that includes both an A-series processor and an LTE modem chip for improved speed and power management. Apple could license LTE modem intellectual property from Intel to achieve that goal, and the chip maker could also be tasked with fabricating the chipset based on its advanced 14-nanometer process.

Article Link: Intel to Produce 'Significant Portion' of LTE Modem Chips for iPhone 7
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2016/03/04/intel-secures-lte-chip-production-iphone-7/
In a world where people upgrade their phone every 2-3 years, a 450Mbps LTE chip doesn't make for much of a selling point. No carrier is going to get anywhere close that during the lifetime of the device. What I am interested in, however, is the part about the 14-nanometer process and what that means for increased battery life.

It would be cool to see Intel fabbing A-series chips someday so that Apple can reduce reliance on Samsung. I've been a fan of Intel since I was a kid and my grandpa would open up his 486 (and old 386) and show me how it works.
 
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macduke said:
In a world where people upgrade their phone every 2-3 years, a 450Mbps LTE chip doesn't make for much of a selling point. No carrier is going to get anywhere close that during the lifetime of the device. What I am interested in, however, is the part about the 14-nanometer process and what that means for increased battery life.

It would be cool to see Intel fabbing A-series chips someday so that Apple can reduce reliance on Samsung. I've been a fan of Intel since I was a kid and my grandpa would open up his 486 (and old 386) and show me how it works.
Click to expand...
http://m.delfi.lt/mokslas/technologijos/article.php?id=70525958
 
Ah, the pain of not knowing which chip will be in which phone, when it gets hot, or maybe it will be the LG OLED display or maybe the SAMSUNG OLED causing this.

All psychiatrists should get their couches ready.

I think we need SIRI programmed to be an iPhone whisperer who can calm down the anxious.

"What LTE chip is in my phone?"
SIRI: It's whatever you want it to be.
"I am confused"
SIRI: It's whatever you want to be.
"Do I have a SAMSUNG OLED with an INTEL LTE modem?"
It's whatever you want.
"Or is it LG with a Qualcomm modem?"
SIRI: It's whatever
$%^E^#&!@!@
SIRI: Glad I could help.
 
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Just like to point out that LTE is really 3G+, and LTE Advanced is real 4G. Despite the fact that companies are calling LTE 4G, it isn't. They lobbied the 4G working group, several years ago to allow them to call LTE 4G, and they were told yes.

There are also no LTE Advanced towers anywhere in the world yet, just some experimental ones. We should see Advanced towers later this year.

In fact, when AT&T and some others are saying that they will start having 5G later this year, they likely are now calling Advanced, 5G. It's screwed up! Real 5G isn't expected until sometime in the 2020's, maybe the late 2020's. There is no standard yet. No one agrees as to what it should be. There are no chips or anything.
 
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Benjamin Frost said:
I wish battery technology had seen a fraction of the improvement that cellular speeds had in the past 10 years.
It's the Achilles Heel of modern tech.
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einsteinbqat said:
Rather have improved battery life than better LTE chip.
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Rest assured that even if we have an absolute amazing battery tech ready, with double power capacity in same size, we can be certain that Sir Jony will slice the iPhone for his anorexic behavioural pattern to achieve thinness and give us same or less battery life as the last iPhone. :(
 
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melgross said:
Just like to point out that LTE is really 3G+, and LTE Advanced is real 4G. Despite the fact that companies are calling LTE 4G, it isn't. They lobbied the 4G working group, several years ago to allow them to call LTE 4G, and they were told yes.

There are also no LTE Advanced towers anywhere in the world yet, just some experimental ones. We should see Advanced towers later this year.

In fact, when AT&T and some others are saying that they will start having 5G later this year, they likely are now calling Advanced, 5G. It's screwed up! Real 5G isn't expected until sometime in the 2020's, maybe the late 2020's. There is no standard yet. No one agrees as to what it should be. There are no chips or anything.
Click to expand...

I thought "4G" was really just 3G+ and LTE is in fact LTE.
 
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But will there be any Intel chips in the next generation of MacBooks, or will Apple deliver a wizard ARM chip and a new OS?
 
Oblivious.Robot said:
Rest assured that even if we have an absolute amazing battery tech ready, with double power capacity in same size, we can be certain that Sir Jony will slice the iPhone for his anorexic behavioural pattern to achieve thinness and give us same or less battery life as the last iPhone. :(
Click to expand...

LOL, indeed. Bet his dream is to make the phone invisible or something.
 
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I like the idea of housing a LTE modem on the processor. Hopefully, Intel has the best technology to give us strong LTE signal and provide even better battery life indirectly.
 
macduke said:
In a world where people upgrade their phone every 2-3 years, a 450Mbps LTE chip doesn't make for much of a selling point. No carrier is going to get anywhere close that during the lifetime of the device. What I am interested in, however, is the part about the 14-nanometer process and what that means for increased battery life.

It would be cool to see Intel fabbing A-series chips someday so that Apple can reduce reliance on Samsung. I've been a fan of Intel since I was a kid and my grandpa would open up his 486 (and old 386) and show me how it works.
Click to expand...

I believe when companies quote these speeds it's more of a theoretical maximum and we will likely not reach those speeds for some time.

The actual benefit, however is every time a theoretical maximum is increased, the actual speeds we experience day to day are also increased, even using the same network. At every step of the journey from the data center to your phone there is a bottleneck, and the wider each those bottlenecks are the greater the speed overall.


TL;DR Network speed will increase but not by much.
 
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