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Apple's New N1 Chip in iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone Air Has a Wi-Fi 7 Limitation
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I was legitimately waiting for this line about the iPhone 17 lineup in this year’s keynote and thought they would unlock 320 MHz in the phones this year.
Probably next year or the year after. I’m curious about what Wi-Fi 7 is going to look like in future MacBook Pro’s. I have an M3 Max and on 6E I can hit about 1600 megabit both ways with my Unifi Wi-Fi access point.
My iPhone 16 Pro Max gets about the same performance so there isn’t really any difference in real world usage (at the moment)
Macrumors is getting almost as bad as 9to5mac with their hyperbole nonsense headlines.
Headline: SOMETHING TERRIBLE
Body: …which doesn’t actually matter at all, but you clicked.
Headline: SOMETHING TERRIBLE
Body: …which doesn’t actually matter at all, but you clicked.
Why lock my thread on this subject when it was started 6 hrs before this one ? Mods are a joke still on this site !
I have gigabit fiber from AT&T, and I recently upgraded one of my UniFi AP’s to their Wi-Fi 7 model. I get the same speeds on my 16 Pro Max when I’m in that room that my Mac is getting on Ethernet. A good 990 Mbps up and down. I’m sure the iPhone Air will do the same. I can’t imagine needing or wanting more than that, and I work from here too.
Another year without 320mhz. What’s wrong with Apple?
320mhz would've probably been an unnecessary power drain (and possible cause of excess heat?) for an unneeded, barely used, or even barely available, feature.
IMO the point is that other issues will likely impact your request for "faster" such that yes the 16PM/17PM probably will be "at least comparable." And most of the world of course remains on WiFi 6E or below anyway.
If this is the trade off we get in return for the power consumption optimization in the N1, I’m all for it. I bet most home/business WiFi infrastructure will only start to hit the limit when this phone is deprecated.
Can someone give me an actual use case (not a theoretical one) where 1.5Gbps is not sufficient for what you need to do an a phone? Even if you have a gigabit speeds at home, websites don't normally allow you download or upload anywhere near that speed. Even local file transfers don't require speeds like this on your phone. Are people editing 8K videos on their phones? lol
I suppose it's the same idea as the C1 & C1X chips lacking support for mmWave 5G. Apple never delivers a full-featured product in the first generation. I would say it's probably a safe bet that the N3 chip in 2027 will support 320 MHz, just like the C3 in the same year will support mmWave. Will these 2 features arrive sooner with the N2 & C2, respectively? Possibly, but I'm not sure.
Wi-Fi 7 is about a lot more than just speed.
For example, Wi-Fi 7 can simultaneously use multiple frequency bands (2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz) for a single connection, which provides better reliability, lower latency, and higher throughput by aggregating bandwidth across bands.
It also features better data encoding (20% more efficient than Wifi 6), better spectrum efficiency, and improved latency.
Do most consumers need these or even know they exist in 2025?
No, but this a key technology on which companies are building the products and protocols of tomorrow and its great that its getting embedded in our devices already now.
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Timmy had to leave something on the table to make the iPhone 18 “the best iPhone we’ve ever made”…
320MHz will be one of Apple’s marketing bullet points next year.
320MHz will be one of Apple’s marketing bullet points next year.
I wonder how we all survived on WiFI 5 or even dial up lol
This. Where folks will see WiFi 7 benefits is at Starbucks-type places where lots of users are concurrently demanding bandwidth. If the Starbucks-type place is providing WiFi 7 and has the necessary incoming internet bandwidth of course...
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320Mhz channels are for 6Ghz which can support it, even in urban areas. 6Ghz doesn’t travel as far as 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz and has more non-overlapping channels.
My 6Ghz fades very fast after I leave my apartment — it just doesn’t like the thick building materials in the walls.
It does not matter with WiFi 7 on a phone. The distance where you get the top speed is very limited before it quickly drops off.
A few years ago everybody shouted we needed 5G for our phones. It would be “magic” and speed would quadruple - and latency cut down to < 1ms.
Well that is all true - if you camp directly under the darn mast. The moment you are 70-150m away from the mast (30-50m in cities) - it is back to 4G equivalent speeds. The problem is 5G coverage require 4x the masts of 4G for same coverage. So now our landscapes are dotted with 4x as many UGLY phone masts.
And end result - nobody can really tell the difference between 4G and 5G in real usage.
WiFi 7 is not that much different - and 6GHz while having less noise - it again require MORE access points to create the SAME coverage as 5GHz and 4x the amount of access points as 2.4GHz.
What would help is “better web developers” and adverts that does not keep reloading or showing video. But (us) developers are lazy and use crap huge libraries to “ease” the development - and have mostly no idea about how much extra crap a page template sends down the wire - which is not really relevant.
A few years ago everybody shouted we needed 5G for our phones. It would be “magic” and speed would quadruple - and latency cut down to < 1ms.
Well that is all true - if you camp directly under the darn mast. The moment you are 70-150m away from the mast (30-50m in cities) - it is back to 4G equivalent speeds. The problem is 5G coverage require 4x the masts of 4G for same coverage. So now our landscapes are dotted with 4x as many UGLY phone masts.
And end result - nobody can really tell the difference between 4G and 5G in real usage.
WiFi 7 is not that much different - and 6GHz while having less noise - it again require MORE access points to create the SAME coverage as 5GHz and 4x the amount of access points as 2.4GHz.
What would help is “better web developers” and adverts that does not keep reloading or showing video. But (us) developers are lazy and use crap huge libraries to “ease” the development - and have mostly no idea about how much extra crap a page template sends down the wire - which is not really relevant.
Apple used a special Broadcom chip that did not have 320. Apple could have chosen to use the 320 Broadcom chip that most were expecting and is widely accepted and used by other phone manufacturers. But for some reason they did not. Just to be clear on that front.
It did not end up having the required hardware. Without looking up model numbers, everyone was expecting the same Broadcom chip that andriods were using. Then during device teardown, it actually was a gimped Broadcom chip different than what everyone else was using and it does not physically support 320.
Implementing the full WiFi 7 capabilities is not something you automatically want to do. Having 320 MHz bandwidth has implications to things like chip cost and power consumption. Apple needs to balance performance with other constraints. The lack of 320 MHz support is neither surprising nor concerning.