Apple Again Said to Adopt Intel LTE Chips for iPhones in 2016

[Tech198]

Oh gosh, I wouldn't even think about jailbreaking an Apple Watch unless you want to recharge your watch during the day, lol. Would be kind of cool to hack it into a little mini-computer that you could use for different tasks, however.

well, actually you'd probably jailbreak for it to recharge faster.

 

[manu chao]

Windows 8 and up has pretty good network management for mobile networks.. you can set it as "metered" if its limited.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/metered-internet-connections-frequently-asked-questions

Thanks, so this is a mode where the OS generally tries to be frugal by among others only downloading priority updates, stopping apps from automatically (?) downloading, stopping to update tiles, and stopping to download files from the (Microsoft ?) cloud. Plus it exposes also options for Sync, Device Setup, and Search Suggestions.

Interestingly, the Surface (Pro), the one (non-phone) Windows device that most likely would be used away from WiFi doesn't have an option of a built-in cell modem. Do you know any Windows devices that have one?

 

[sillypooh]

The iPhone 1-4 used Infineon wireless modems and Intel bought Infineon's wireless portfolio, so Apple would just be returning to their original supplier. If I remember correctly, in the Apple-Samsung patent lawsuits, Samsung accused Apple of violating their wireless patents on Infineon-based iPhones but not Qualcomm-based iPhones. Hopefully, Apple's new contract with Intel provides better patent exhaustion protection to avoid that being used against them.

It probably has something to do with patents as there have been a number of recent lawsuits relating to the Qualcomm radio chips. Bizarrely, these lawsuits were targeting Apple and not the chip supplier.

 

[randian]

Bizarrely, these lawsuits were targeting Apple and not the chip supplier.

Going after the deepest pocket.

LTE chips aren't just about the downlink speed, radio quality has a huge impact especially when signal is marginal. Motorola and Qualcomm have a lot more experience with radios than Intel does.

 

[GreyOS]

This will be interesting from a battery life perspective.

From what I understand, Apple can only do so much for battery life by improving the efficiency of the CPUs they design.

A lot of battery is used by the cellular chips. If Intel can do something different here then that's great.

 

[Menel]

True, but just taping on a youtube link by mistake a few times in a month will already do some damage to your data plan.
A user should be able to set the maximum download rate for movies, or set the maximum cache.

The rate doesn't matter... a 2 GB movie at 150mbps LTE or 450mbps LTE... is still 2 GB.

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Going after the deepest pocket.

LTE chips aren't just about the downlink speed, radio quality has a huge impact especially when signal is marginal. Motorola and Qualcomm have a lot more experience with radios than Intel does.

Intel has plenty of radio experience. They have entire teams dedicated behind bluetooth, wifi, and other technologies.

They might have different ideas for IC optimizations, they are experts here. More importantly they have the most advanced fabs in the world, often 2 to 3 generations ahead of who Qualcomm would be able to contract to use.

Ive always thought an Apple design SOC produced on Intel's advanced fabs would freaking rock.

Sounds like they may try this with the cellular transceiver first.

 

[macduke]

You mean in that minute you would download half a GB of... what exactly?

For me, LTE has made my websurfing experience significantly faster. That doesn't imply that I surf faster in terms of visiting more websites per minute (and end up with a higher download volume).

My new office has iffy WiFi reception (when they renovated they removed an old router, so hopefully it gets replaced soon), so often times I just end up turning it off. Then when I get home, I sometimes end up watching a few HD videos and burn through a few hundred megabytes without even realizing it. My LTE is usually around 30Mbps, so it's not really distinguishable from WiFi when a video goes to buffer. My comment was more of a joke, while still highlighting the ridiculous notion that we can download all this data so quickly but are so severely restricted to the amount we can use. It's like fitting a pressurized bucket with a firehose.

I wish iOS let you set zones for settings. Turn off WiFi at work, turn on at home, etc. Android has that. It's on my short list of iOS feature requests. Shouldn't be that complicated since alerts pop up when I get home.

 

[macduke]

I forgot about jailbreak! Maybe the jealbreak community can free the Apple Watch from needing an iPhone to work, that'd be amazing.

Does the Apple Watch have WiFi? I assumed it does everything with Bluetooth, but I would think it would need WiFi to do handoff for glances and notifications when your phone is out of BT range at home. I didn't see a specs page for Apple Watch on Apple's website.

I think trying to run it without an iPhone would really run down the battery because the iPhone is the device always checking for notifications and running tasks. The Apple Watch just waits for a BT LE signal from the iPhone most of the time.

It would still be interesting to see what people come up with.

 

[Andrei90]

Does the Apple Watch have WiFi? I assumed it does everything with Bluetooth, but I would think it would need WiFi to do handoff for glances and notifications when your phone is out of BT range at home. I didn't see a specs page for Apple Watch on Apple's website.

I think trying to run it without an iPhone would really run down the battery because the iPhone is the device always checking for notifications and running tasks. The Apple Watch just waits for a BT LE signal from the iPhone most of the time.

It would still be interesting to see what people come up with.

Yes it has WiFi, if the Apple Watch is on the same WiFI network as your iPhone you can use that instead of bluetooth.

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The rate doesn't matter... a 2 GB movie at 150mbps LTE or 450mbps LTE... is still 2 GB.

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Intel has plenty of radio experience. They have entire teams dedicated behind bluetooth, wifi, and other technologies.

They might have different ideas for IC optimizations, they are experts here. More importantly they have the most advanced fabs in the world, often 2 to 3 generations ahead of who Qualcomm would be able to contract to use.

Ive always thought an Apple design SOC produced on Intel's advanced fabs would freaking rock.

Sounds like they may try this with the cellular transceiver first.

You are not getting it. If you have a 1000mbps internet connection and you click by mistake on a youtube video you'll download it completely before you can close it.

 

[justperry]

The rate doesn't matter... a 2 GB movie at 150mbps LTE or 450mbps LTE... is still 2 GB.

This is false, if you read my post you responded to you should know I said accidentally, this means you download something you don't want, and speed does matter here.

Assume this
Monthly data package = 1 GB

Low speed 8Mbs for 10 seconds = 8 MB, still have about 1 GB left

High speed 450 Mbs for 10 seconds = 562 MB, so you lost more than half of your monthly data!

 

[vault]

450Mbps LTE? That's the peak speed of 802.11n on my old Airport Extreme, lol.

Blow through your entire wireless plan in one minute!

The numbers are misleading and overblown. 450Mbps is shared across all clients in range of the BTS, also, things like range, obstructions and interference will severely limit that speed.

iOS and a lot of its app have been designed to (optionally) restrict part of its networking to WiFi. It's something every app designer with potentially a lot of data traffic has to consider, adding a mode where some networking duties are put on hold if there is no WiFi connection and deciding which part of the data traffic falls into which category.

All this does not exist in OS X or in applications running on it. Meaning there is no way to limit what data can travel over a cellphone network modem. Every networking call would have to be evaluated by the OS X developers (and third-party developers) to decide into which category it would fall, ie, category (1) for traffic that only should flow if there is a Wifi or Ethernet connection and category (2) for traffic that should also flow if there is only a connection via a cellphone network connection.

And it is not only about deciding into which bucket a certain type of traffic should fall, it is to ensure that other parts of the OS can cope with only part of their network requests going through. OS X is simply not designed with the idea that network traffic might be metered and billed. So, it's not only creating such a two tier data traffic system, it is also about minimising the amount of traffic that is deemed to flow over the cellphone network, again something the is OS is not designed for.

That's not the real reason, otherwise we wouldn't have tethering option in iPhones. They just really want you to buy an iPhone for that.

That is in my opinion the main reason be don't have laptops with cellphone network modems (to my knowledge they are also far and few between on the Windows side).

There's plenty. Even cheap netbooks used to come with WWAN interfaces.

 

[Menel]

This is false, if you read my post you responded to you should know I said accidentally, this means you download something you don't want, and speed does matter here.

Assume this
Monthly data package = 1 GB

Low speed 8Mbs for 10 seconds = 8 MB, still have about 1 GB left

High speed 450 Mbs for 10 seconds = 562 MB, so you lost more than half of your monthly data!

First.
450mbps for 10seconds = at best around 372MB

Second.
This is an upgrade from LTE, which is currently at 150mbps over 10 seconds = maybe 125MB
So 125MB vs 372

Third!
Data is inexpensive. Who cares. If you goof, to add an extra gig for the month is the difference of a six pack.

Fourth?
Dont like technological progress, go check yourself into an assisted living community

 

[panZ]

Intel's modem chip, powered by ARM...

I find some mildly amusing irony in folks getting excited about an Intel modem chip getting in a major consumer device and that chip being powered by ARM cores rather than x86.

 

[JoEw]

From user perspective, that is probably it, yes. There will also be certain feature differences, but the majority of end users wouldn't even notice them.

You can compare it to the Intel / AMD rivalry in PC CPUs, except this time around, Intel is the underdog. Qualcomm is an unbelievably powerful company in the mobile business. Probably more powerful than Intel has ever been in the CPU business.

Really? Cause they just lost about 100,000,000 modem sales next year

 

[Palladium SG]

I find some mildly amusing irony in folks getting excited about an Intel modem chip getting in a major consumer device and that chip being powered by ARM cores rather than x86.

It's pretty hard to get excited from anything from Intel, unless you are a server person. Even Apple gets a ton more mileage out from their own ARM chip design using inferior nodes than Intel consumer chips despite their bleeding edge process advantage.

 

[Avieshek]

The annoyingly problematic thing regarding Qualcomm is their lack of quick adoption of the latest fabrication processes. The iPhone 6 has the wireless modem built on 65nm processes (so, think about the iPhone 5). Thats why during 3G or LTE usage the phone gets iron hot and battery drains too. There's also a monopoly that keeps them lazy. With intel, we can hope the break on monopoly chain and hence the 'laziness'. The competition will drive them either to respond to 14nm than 10nm and likewise other Fin-Fet industry standards as they come or just leave the game acting further as the stagnation in industry.

 

[Avieshek]

Can anyone tell me regarding Apple's progress on 'Quantum-Dots' display and integration with LG's LTPS panel. The iPhone 6 presented full 8-bit colour support or sRGB, so, will the next year be like Rec2020 or Wide-Colour-Gamut or a HDR display from Apple?

The updated camera on 6s is said to include a white-subpixel on the Sony's 12mp image sensor, so as to be ready for the Quantum-Dots or micro-LED display for the 2016 iPhone 7 one year after?
Because, hey, the next year, it's iPhone 7, the 6 did the screen size and every new number came with an incremental surprise with related to display whether it be resolution, screen-size and so the next can be about true-colours.

 

[class77]

Some of Apple's iPhones produced in 2016 will use wireless modem chips supplied by Intel rather than Qualcomm, reports VentureBeat. iPhones (presumably the iPhone 7) sold in emerging markets in Asia and Latin America will reportedly use an Intel 7360 LTE modem.

The 7360 LTE modem chip [PDF] from Intel features up to 450Mbps downlink and it supports 29 LTE bands. It will begin shipping out to manufacturers during the second half of 2015. Apple engineers have reportedly been traveling to Munich, Germany to collaborate with Intel engineers on the chip.

Though VentureBeat suggests the Intel chips might only be used in some iPhones in emerging markets, analyst Ben Bajarin believes that Apple would make the switch universal, rather than using separate chips in different versions of the phone.

Today's report is the second time we've heard inklings of an Intel-Apple modem partnership. KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted Apple's switch from Qualcomm to Intel for its baseband chips back in January. The shift from Qualcomm to Intel for even a portion of LTE chips will be a major loss for Qualcomm, as the company has supplied Apple with modem chips for many years now.

Article Link: Apple Again Said to Adopt Intel LTE Chips for iPhones in 2016

Oh Crap. That means the iPhone 7 won't be out for 2 years!!

 

[LordVic]

Third!
Data is inexpensive. Who cares. If you goof, to add an extra gig for the month is the difference of a six pack.

HAH!

not everyone has the same acccess you do.

You've never had to have a cell phone in Canada . $90 / mth for 2gb of data, with additional fees for overage (I believe roughly $2 / MB)

so don't assume that your data costs are universal.