I never saw it when on AT&T, but now that I am on Spectrum, whomever they use in my area does have mmWave so I am starting to see it now and it is a noticeable difference.
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Apple's C1 Modem Debut Suggests iPhone 17 Air Will Lack mmWave
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I never saw it when on AT&T, but now that I am on Spectrum, whomever they use in my area does have mmWave so I am starting to see it now and it is a noticeable difference.
Other than the mmWave omission, how do we know how the C1 compares? It hasn't been released yet.
No way any of these are true. Considering mmWave is the "Real" and "True" 5G according to Macrumors commentators.
Or unless they were all wrong.
The executive summary of several years of news on this issue is roughly as follows: Qualcomm owns a crap-ton of patents, which makes it difficult (and expensive) for anyone else to engineer an acceptable cellular modem that doesn't infringe upon those patents. Qualcomm knows that they have everyone else over a barrel, so they charge steep fees for their modems to all cell phone vendors.
In 2011, Intel bought another company which was developing their own modems to compete against Qualcomm, but Intel eventually gave up on this; thus, in 2019 Intel sold their entire cellular modem business to Apple. Apple has been attempting to continue that work, in order to get away from having to rely upon Qualcomm.
If Apple finally succeeds, Qualcomm will lose their strangle grip on the cellular modem industry, and everyone -- Apple customers and otherwise -- will likely benefit. (Except for Qualcomm, of course.)
Casually disparaging mmWave is the tech-nerd equivalent of letting everyone know you don't like Nickelback.
I'm sure there are many people who never encounter mmWave in their daily lives and obviously it's less prevalent than sub-6GHz flavors of 5G, but where it exists it's noticeable, particularly on Verizon and the brands that run on it. Verizon is also the carrier where data priority matters more than other carriers (so you need all the help you can get), but regardless of carrier I'm never buying a phone that doesn't have access to all the bands available (at least those available in the U.S., where I live).
I'm sure there are many people who never encounter mmWave in their daily lives and obviously it's less prevalent than sub-6GHz flavors of 5G, but where it exists it's noticeable, particularly on Verizon and the brands that run on it. Verizon is also the carrier where data priority matters more than other carriers (so you need all the help you can get), but regardless of carrier I'm never buying a phone that doesn't have access to all the bands available (at least those available in the U.S., where I live).
Only thing I would add..
Qualcomm modems do work very well and are reliable and a known quantity
We don’t, but most of the pundits believe it’s a tough hill to climb. They expect Apple’s first attempt to have good performance but believe it will likely not be at the bleeding edge like Qualcomm’s latest, partially because of the significant IP obstacles, as Qualcomm controls so many of the patents. Remember that Apple is starting from Intel’s failed attempt, and then had to put out a contrite press release essentially written by Qualcomm because Apple completely failed to meet their own deadline. The other factor is Apple won’t have significant real world experience with C1 in time for the chip to be completed for iPhone 17 manufacturing. It makes more sense gain some experience and then leverage that experience into the iPhone 18/19 series with C2… with mmWave too.
OTOH, we KNOW Qualcomm’s offering is good, and it’s a perfect fit for Apple’s flagship lines in 2025.
EDIT:
Also see the post from @Unami below. I believe Gurman previously stated C2 would be 6 Gbps.
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So, max 4 Gb/s vs. 6 GB/s. If that's really it's only weakness, i'd rather take the slower but more power efficient modem. Can't imagine a use case for either speed on a phone right now.
The Air is definitely turning out to be a strange product. It's supposedly replacing the Plus in the lineup, but it's also going to be lacking features that even the regular 17 will habe? So price-wise it might cost as much as the Plus, but feature-wise it's actually only a step above the 16E?
That said, I can't say I care too much about mmWave, only being able to get it in a few places downtown. The signal is otherwise so weak that I can't pick it up anywhere else.
That said, I can't say I care too much about mmWave, only being able to get it in a few places downtown. The signal is otherwise so weak that I can't pick it up anywhere else.
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mmWave 5G isn't the talking or selling point (it never was this for me anyway) that it was made out to be in the early days of 5G. In the US, Verizon is the main carrier that uses mmWave 5G over sub-6 and in a place like LA where cell coverage by all carriers is in abundance most places you go, I can tell you that on my Pixel 8 Pro with a supposed crap(pier) Samsung Exynos modem, I have gotten close to 1.5Gbps down with the official Ookla Speedtest.net app on T-Mobile that uses sub-6 5G and the norm is easily several hundred Mbps at any given time.
I'm not defending this new modem or a fan of the phone in general but the lack of mmWave 5G isn't and shouldn't be a dealbreaker for this phone, this phone has plenty of those already without the lack of mmWave 5G.
I'm not defending this new modem or a fan of the phone in general but the lack of mmWave 5G isn't and shouldn't be a dealbreaker for this phone, this phone has plenty of those already without the lack of mmWave 5G.
Exactly. I think in most areas it's not useful to have it. If your at a stadium or other densely populated area where its available. Chances are your not going to even benefit from it, since you're "busy" doing other things.
If you live near by it, then it's fantastic. But, even then are you using it as a hotspot or something? Or you upload to your social media constantly/live stream/etc.
It is certainly nice to have and I'm all for advancing technology and providing as much bandwidth as possible. If it costs too much to have it and not really use it. I say it's not worth the effort to include it until it is. At least for this part. 6Gb download is WICKED fast for a phone. Unless I"m downloading a game update or something. Or sharing my internet connection with 5+ devices in these specific areas. I'm personally good with 1Gb. Heck I get by with 100Mb!!!!!
Quite so; after all, those patents were filed for a reason.
And that is precisely why the performance of Apple's C1 Modem is so critical; going forward, Apple can't afford to make "flagship" iPhones with modems which are noticeably inferior to their previous products. Entirely aside from the mmWave issue: if Apple doesn't get this right, they're going to be stuck continually paying whatever Qualcomm wants to charge.
But it is not. There is also sensitivity and connection reliability. Dropped connections and unable to connect even though the appears to be a low signal level (AKA 1 or 2 bars) was an issue with the old Intel modem chips. And how this new Apple C1 chip performs in real world operation in this regard is a major unknown.
Good luck to early adopters.
Cool with me. Turning off 5G entirely is always the first thing I do when I get a new iPhone. It's a battery killer that offers no noticeable difference in performance to me.
Yup Spectrum is Verizon. mmWave is freaking awesome in the limited areas where you have signal. I actually do app updates over 5G mmWave because it's faster than my home wifi. However realistically in day to day use no one really needs that kind of download speeds on a phone.
Then simply turn off auto-connect by “forgetting” the network in question. You do know how to do that, right?