Google’s Pixel 7 or 8 had mmWave in Australia and the same paucity of locations that could offer mmWave has ensured that mmWave’s popularity has waned dramatically. So there have been other devices with mmWave but iPhones in Australia don’t have it, you are likely 1000% right about not having iPhones with mmWave outside of the US.
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Android Phones With Qualcomm Modems Top iPhone 16e in New 5G Test
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I also think majority user do not care that much about CPU and modem speed because of many thing like this and practical difference during usage. Kudos to Qualcomm and weird is that iPhone got hot. Plus no one reported battery consumption during test. If it would be in favor Android I think they would put it there. But can be wrong.
Just dipped?
Apple acquired Intel Mobile Communications which was formed after Intel acquired the Wireless Solutions (WLS) division of Infineon early in 2010 (completed in 2011). It has been a pretty long history.
I happened to be in the German Office when the all hands happened to announce the acquisition from Intel.
I live in rural Mexico and get excited when I have 3 bars of LTE! And you’re talking about speeds that Starlink barely exceeds when a major futbol match is live.
The iPhone 16 Pro doesn't use the C1 chip. It still uses a Qualcomm chip. Only the 16e uses the C1 chip.
Well, they may outperform on energy consumption, that is an expertise in Apple that Qualcomm may not be on par with and knowing they could not do a better modem in other areas they clearly focused on what they knew they could do better.
The tricky thing however is that as we do not have the same model in two variants it is really hard to do a 1:1 comparison and c
So the "just dipped" was a bit out of line, BTW I was there at the infineon office in germny when the acquisition from Intel was announced in the all hands meeting
At the very least it suggests that however they’re doing these tests, they’re probably not representative of normal usage and wouldn’t make much noticeable difference for users. The only time I’ve had an issue with bandwidth since LTE is when I’m getting a poor signal, which I think is where radios would do best to differentiate themselves; which one will maintain a usable signal at further ranges and with more interference?
Even if Qualcomm does beat out the C1 in this metric, I doubt they’ll go out of their way to test and highlight it since there are so many different conditions that can reduce usability, and it’d be hard to explain which ones would matter most.
Interesting that you’ve observed this too. My Mum got a 16 Pro to replace her 12 Pro. A few years ago she’d taken some macro shots of bees 🐝 on her 12 Pro which looked absolutely amazing. But no matter what she tried she couldn’t reproduce similar shots on the 16 Pro… the bee would always come out fuzzy, weirdly distorted, or fake looking, almost as if there is some AI filter doing its best to ignore the bee? Shots of flowers alone (no bee), however, would look fine…
Don’t think there’s much chance of a switch to Android, but she’s certainly very disappointed with her 16 Pro!
it's not.
it's the first time Johny Srouji lead a radio chip team for apple. just dipped is accurate. Johny says it's "just the start" https://www.macrumors.com/2025/02/20/apple-says-c1-modem-is-just-the-start/
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I suspect it is more that you have enough bandwidth to chop up so all those phones can get working service at once.
I don't think Apple cares about "beating" Qualcomm tbh. They care more about being independent of Qualcomm. Before the C1, Qualcomm had control of hundreds of billions of dollars of Apple's valuation depending on whether they decided to continue to sell Apple modems.
IMHO most consumers think the 5G roll-out was just an excuse for carriers to charge more money and push expensive phone sales - and it is somewhat true in that 5G is more about telco architecture and efficiency. A 5G tower can support significantly more service to more customers than a set of LTE/3G/Edge towers. The 5G architecture is meant to support a suite of new connectivity options that carriers can sell that were infeasible before. And a 5G capable phone can potentially use a lot less resources on the network than older phones will.
So 5G on its own isn't really a differentiator more than a qualifier - people would be worried about a non-5G phone becoming obsolete too soon, and carriers would object to new non-5G models being sold for their network.
In terms of actual differentiators - I don't think even a sizeable minority of people are going to buy a phone because someone told them it has a higher peak data transfer rate over cellular networks - they care more features like all-day battery life and the ability to place calls in low signal. People want their data to never be slow (stalling, sub-ISDN speeds) more, because they can't really internally qualitatively evaluate a claim of "fast".
Apple also has an advantage advertising differentiating features because they are picking the features they want to develop themselves. Qualcomm can have advanced LTE features like predictive tower seeking, but it doesn't do much good if the phone platform ignores it, and doesn't make Qualcomm look any better if the OEM doesn't advertise it as a feature. Apple can plan out features to pitch as a coherent package justifying new phone model upgrades.
Qualcomm also has a disadvantage that they announce a chipset months in advance of release, and then may have months more delay until flagship products ship with it. Apple presumably will announce any new features in the C2 in a two week window of delivery to consumers.
Qualcomm's biggest disadvantages though in differentiating their product is that they are really only capable of doing it to their customers - phone OEMs. Android handset manufacturers aren't picking between an X80 and a C2. This is a challenge Intel has faced as Apple moved away from x86 processors - Intel can't do anything directly marketing-wise to prevent people picking a MacBook Pro over a Lenovo.
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