~1% care enough to keep track of the hardware/software stack changes.
~99% just want something that works to their mind's eye.
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Apple Unveils 'C1' as First Custom Cellular Modem
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~99% just want something that works to their mind's eye.
How good is this new modem? Enquiring minds want to know!
Seriously, reading the comments, people don't realize that this chip is not the same one that will go into the iPhone 17 models. This one does not have the extra features that the Qualcomm chip has.
Seriously, reading the comments, people don't realize that this chip is not the same one that will go into the iPhone 17 models. This one does not have the extra features that the Qualcomm chip has.
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The bottleneck in mobile Internet speed has long been that imposed by the provider. Does any 5G telecom offer anywhere near the speed potential of 5G?
I remember getting 200mbps once on Rogers (Toronto) the week 5G launched in Canada. I've never seen that speed ever again.
I doubt any difference in modem speed limits will be noticed in practice. I'll take the battery efficiency.
I’m still on an XS. Before that I had the 5s. I’m not worried about it as much as others are. I just plug in at night.
Apple die hards- "apple needs to make their own chips so they can bring the prices down."
Apple- "We will make our own chips for everything and still charge you an arm and a leg for a mid range device."
Apple- "We will make our own chips for everything and still charge you an arm and a leg for a mid range device."
well, it's not, seen download speeds of 700+mbps on my 13PM ... But, for this entry level phone, its not required, I agree with that.
Monopoly?
QC has been in the game since before BlackBerry. They create chips and IP to advance ALL players in the market place. They do NOT unfairly price out anyone and unlock GOOGLE they don't make phones to compete with their customers!
Oh are you made because Apple's C1 doesn't support Milimeter Wave on 5G?! That was expected!
Or maybe your made with all the money Apple spent on a 'car' project that REALLY was simply this beautiful Car Play that their customers STILL have yet to implement.
No no wait ... its because they have chips that are being used into cars and making advances and no longer relying on Apple for revenue and they've made adjustments to their business.
Ooooh I get it you're mad at Qualcomm (QC) because the original Apple Silicon team left and happily absorbed into Qualcomm and now their an SoC competitor on desktop - although not close to the performance BUT they learned rapidly and their 8 Elite SoC for mobile is kicking Apple Silicon for smartphones arse?!
Yup that's why you poorly and incorrectly use the term robbery and monopoly against qualcomm.
MediaTek makes chipsets that can use mobile networks, as well as Samsung with their Exynos SoC's globally. There is NO monolopy like you dream of.
Appl eis simply trying to make everything in house and they would with OLED if they could too.
There is no need to through around hate and words that do NOT apply to the competition.
I bought a cheap local SIM while traveling, which did support 5G, but limited the speeds to 50 Mbit/s.
Guess what: zero noticeable difference.
App updates are typically done in the background while charging and other than that the most bandwidth hungry task on a phone is video streaming at like 8 Mbit/s.
It's depressing to think that humanity might be wasting gigawatts of energy per day because Qualcomm modems suck at power saving. Having worked with Qualcomm stuff in the past, it's probably true.
Same here. Basically I've been delaying my MacBook upgrade just because of all that potential. It's been easy since even my basic M1 is blazing fast and has long battery life.
but it is the C4 that will deliver real explosive performance.I hear the C3 version is going to be AMAZING, but the really cool stuff will come in the C5 modem
logically thinking, you can make system more "self-aware" to save energy in situations that hog battery. In theory at least
100percent agree, I have been a long time Verizon customer in LA area and have been testing T-Mobile. T-Mobile is far better right now than Verizon unfortunately. mmwave penetration is like wifi.Paying arm and a leg for Verizon for subpar service compared to T-mobile at least in LA and surrounding counties
Remember the W1 chip which got replaced with H1 then H2 chip? That seems to be a possibility with the C1 chip, although they cannot rename it as M1 since that has been used by MacBooks and iPads and M7 was first used in iPhone 5s as motion co-processor.
I'm really looking forward to how well, and more importantly, how reliably this performs. If it is 100% reliable, but a little bit slower than the Qualcomm chips, who cares, I don't download anything to my phone that exceeds the need for 100mbps... But it needs to be reliable, if they can get that bit right, the rest will follow.
Likely will be extended again. Apple tends to sell older models for mulitple years. If the iPhone 17 has a Qualcomm modem it may not disappear in less than 2 years. Maybe a bit over 2 years, but not less than. Apple moving the 16e up into the iPhone n-2 price point may mean that the 17 won't get that 3rd year.
More likely it is to get the first modem to work 'well enough' and to put the top end stuff on a C2 (or maybe even C3) modem. If the C1 has real world quirks... C2 may not fix them enough to pass muster on the top end expensive iPhones. Apple probably believes that the C1 in the 16e isn't a 'beta test', but Apple ships things each year that run into problems when get deployed in the real world.
The C1 only covers a subset of what the Qualcomm stack can do. Still have yet to get to a complete functional coverage.
There are 3 main aspects of performance that need to be considered. They are not completely independent, sometimes it is possible to to improve one aspect while decreasing the capability of other aspects.
1) Power Efficiency. From the announcements it appears that the C1 chip has a clear advantage.
2) Speed. The C1 chip might have a disadvantage here but it might not be critical as long as it’s not too slow
3) Sensitivity/Stability. That is the big unknown. Dropout and limited sensitivity (even slight degradation) can have a huge impact on user perceived performance. This was a major short coming with the old Intel modems. Technically, determining the Link Margin is a way to quantify this parameter.
Of course all of this is not the sole responsibility of modem. Antenna design and what is on the other side of the communication path strongly impacts the performance. But for the 16e, all eyes are on the new C1 chip.
1) Power Efficiency. From the announcements it appears that the C1 chip has a clear advantage.
2) Speed. The C1 chip might have a disadvantage here but it might not be critical as long as it’s not too slow
3) Sensitivity/Stability. That is the big unknown. Dropout and limited sensitivity (even slight degradation) can have a huge impact on user perceived performance. This was a major short coming with the old Intel modems. Technically, determining the Link Margin is a way to quantify this parameter.
Of course all of this is not the sole responsibility of modem. Antenna design and what is on the other side of the communication path strongly impacts the performance. But for the 16e, all eyes are on the new C1 chip.
There is also a 3.5 aspect where cut corners on standards implementation. 16e is WiFi 6 ( not 7 or 6e). Cheaper part or the part they are using doesn't have that option? Standards usually fall in the "more speed" bucket but there are security and interoperability over the long term aspects also.
Also worth mentioning are the ongoing "vulnerabilities" in Qualcomm chips that just happen to be backdoors allowing state-level spying on communications (remember Edward Snowden?). I'm sure this is a factor in Apple's decisions, they just would never talk about it in marketing.
techstartups.com
“Qualcomm spies on smartphone users, sends personal data to Qualcomm,” German security firm Nitrokey warns - Tech Startups
"During our security research, we found that smartphones with Qualcomm chips secretly send personal data to Qualcomm." In 2021, Edward Snowden, a former NSA whistleblower, issued a warning regarding national security. He said that “the greatest danger to national security has become the...
techstartups.com
Yeah. Great would be a proper comparison with
a) Latest iPhone 16 Qualcomm modem
b) iPhone SE2 Intel modem (4G only, but direct predecessor of C1)
Firstly, download rates should be compared for these three devices with strong and low (0-1 bar) signal strenghts each.
And secondly with 5G and 4G separated.
Is there a way to get raw dB signal strenght values from iPhones?
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so what you're saying is that Apple is the same as it has always been - or do you recall a time when Apple competed on price and were happy to have low margins?
Fifth generation towers will switch protocols within a frequency band, e.g. they can use the same band for LTE and 5G. It is unlikely there'd be an area which is blanketed in mmWave but where they left the sub 6-ghz towers unupgraded.